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PUBLIC  LIBRARY;       JUN  2  01962 


Harpefs  Magazine 


INDEX 


\or 


Volume  223 


July   1961 December  1961 


18G7S5 


HARPER        &        BROTHERS,         PUBLISHERS        •        NEW        YORK 


Harper's  Magazine 

HARPER        &:        BROTHERS,         PUBLISHERS        •        NEW        \'    O    R    R 

INDEX 

Volume  223  •  July   1961    .   .  .  December   1961 
Actual  titles  are  in  quotations;  subject  matter  in  capital  type. 


"Aborigine,     The     Invisible"  — Eu- 
gene Burdick,  Sept.  69 
Advertising,  Product-less,  Oct.  30 

AFTER  HOURS 

Advertising,  Oct.  30 

"Canada,  Culture-Struck,"  Aug.  16 

"Car  for  Sale,"  Nov.  26 

"Case  of  the  Vanishing  Product,"  Oct. 

30 
Catalogues,  Trade,  Oct.  32 
Fanny,  Filming  of,  July  14 
"Invasion  of  Marseilles,"  July  14 
"Monk  Talk,"  Sept.  21 
"Throwaways,  Precious,"  Oct.  32 
"You  Tell  Them,  Pop  — You've  Got 

the  Vox,"  Dec.  20 
Yuletide  Greetings,  Dec.  22 

Agency  for  International  De- 
velopment, Nov.  12 

"America  Under  Pressure" —  Adlai 
E.  Stevenson,  Aug.  21 

ARCHITECTURE 

"Ball   Park,   How   Not   to   Build   A," 

Aug.  2.5 
"Chicago  Could  Be  Proud  of.  What," 

Dec.  34 
"Lincoln  Center,  Culture  Monopoly 

at,"  Oct.  82 
"New  Vision  in  Architecture,"  July  73 

"Art  and  Society"  —  Kenneth  C^lark, 

Aug.  74 
"Art  of  Photography,  On  the"  — 

Henri  Cartier-Bresson,  Nov.  73 

ARTS,  THE 

"Art  and  Society,"  Aug.  74 

"Art  Books,"  Dec.  87 

"Art  of  Photography,"  Nov.  73 

"Feifier,    Jules,    and    the    Almost-in- 

Group,"  Sept.  58 
Lincoln  Center,  Oct.  82 
Music,  See  also 
Theatre,  See  also 
Writing  and  Publishing,  See  also 

Auchincloss,  Louis  — The  Master 
Journalist  of  American  Fiction, 
Nov.  124 

Australian  Aborigine,  Sept.  69 

AUTOMOBILES 

"Car  for  Sale,"  Nov.  26 

Baby,  Yvonne  —  Henri  Cartier-Bres- 
son on  Art  of  Photography,  Nov. 
73 

"Ball  Park,  How  Not  to  Build  A" 
—  Allan  Temko,  Aug.  25 

Bart,  Peter  B.  -  A  W^arning  to  Wall 
Street  Amateurs,  July  21 

Barthelmc,  Donald— The  Case  of  the 
Vanishing  Product,  Oct.  30 


Begonia  Belle,  S.  S.,  Oct.  80 
"Bernstein,  Leonard,  the  American 
Offenbach?"  — Disctis,  Sept.  104 
Birch  Society,  The  John,  Oct.  48 
"Bird  on  the  Mesa,  A"  —  William 

Eastlake,  Oct.  57 
Birth  Control  in  India,  Nov.  79 
Blind  River,  Canada,  Sept.  81 
"Blocked  Feed,  A"  —  Nigel  Dennis, 

Dec.  79 
Bloom,    Murray   Teigh  —  Your    Un- 
known Heirs,  Aug.  29 
Boats,  Old  River,  Oct.  80 
Bodsworth,  Fred  —  Canada's  Luxury 
Ghost  Town,  Sept.  81 

BOOKS 

"Books  in  Brief"  —  Katherine  Gauss 
Jackson,  July  99;  Aug.  91;  Sept. 
101;  Oct.  Ill;  Dec.  102 

Lewis,  Sinclair,  Review  of  Mark 
Schorer's  Bioc.rai'HV  of,  Nov.  124 

"New  Books  "—  Paul  Pickrel,  July  91; 
Stanley  Kiuiitz,  Aug.  86;  Irving 
Kristol,  Sept.  96;  Alfred  Kazin,  Oct. 
104;  Paul  Pickrel,  Nov.  109;  Louis 
Auchincloss,  Nov.  124;  Leo  Stein- 
berg, Dec.  87 

"Precious  Throwaways,"  Oct.  32 

Borgenicht,  Miriam —Teachers  Col- 
lege: An  Extinct  Volcano,  July  82 

Boroff,  David  —  Eager  Swarthmore, 
Oct.  139 

Boyd,  Robin— The  New  Vision  in 
Architecture,  July  73 

Bullard,  W.  E.  —  Guinean  Diary, 
Dec.  69  ' 

Burdick,  Eugene— The  Invisible 
Aborigine,  Sept.  69 

BUSINESS  AND  ECONOMICS 

"Kennedy's  Economists,  "  Sept.  25 
"Money  Bait,"  Sept.  10 
"Private  Eye  to  Industry,  "  Nov.  61 
"Strange  Romance  Between  John  L. 
Lewis  and  Cyrus  Eaton,"  Dec.  25 

Cahn,  Edmond  —  How  to  Destroy 
the  Churches,  Nov.  33 

Caldwell,  Nat  and  Gene  S.  Graham 
—  Strange  Romance  Between  Cy- 
rus L.  Eaton  and  John  L.  Lewis, 
Dec.  25 

CANADA 

"Canada's     Luxury     (ihost      lown," 

Sept.  81 
"C;ullurc-Struck  Canada."  Aug.  16 
"Quebec's  Revolt  Against   the  Cath- 
olic Schools,"  July  53 

"CIanada's  Luxury'  (iiiosi  Town"  — 
Fred  BodswortiL  Sept.  81 


Candlestick  Park.  San  Francisco, 
Aug.  25 

"Car  for  Sale"— J.  \.  Maxtone 
Graham,  Nov.  26 

Carleton,  William  G.  —  Cult  of  Per- 
sonality Comes  to  the  White 
House,  Dec.  63 

"Cartier-Bresson,  Henri,  on  the 
Art  of  Photography"  —  Yvonne 
Baby,  Nov.  73 

"Case  of  the  Vanishing  Product" 

—  Donald  Barthelme,  Oct.  30 
Catalogues,  Trade,  Oct.  32 
Central  Intelligence  Agency,  Oct. 

43 
Cliapin,   Miriam  —  Quebec's   Revolt 

Against  the  Catholic  Schools,  July 

53 
Gihapman,   John  L.  —  The  Uncanny 

World  of  Plasma  Physics,  Oct.  64 
Chase,  Richard  —  The  New  Campus 

Magazines,  Oct.  168 
"Chicago     Could     Be     Proud     of. 

What"  — Elinor  Richey,   Dec.   34 
Christian     Anti-Communism     Cru- 
sade, Texas,  Oct.  52 
"Christmas    List"  —  John     P  ischer, 

Dec.  15 
"Churches,  How  to  Destroy  the" 

—  Edmond  Cahn,  Nov.  33 
"C.l.A.    Mv    Escape    from    the" — 

Hughes  Rudd.  Oct.  43 
City  Center,  New  York,  Oct.  82 
City-Country  Living,  Problems  in, 

Sept.  33 
"City  Streets,  Violence  in  the"  — 

Jane  Jacobs,  Sept.  37 
Clark,    Kenneth  —  .Art   and    Sotiety, 

Aug.  74 
Clarke,  .'Krthur  C.  —  I  he  LIscs  of  the 

Moon,  Dec.  56 
"Cla.ssroom,  The  Wasted"— Natiian 

Glazer,  Oct.  147 
Coal  Industry,  Dec.  25 
Cold  War,  Our  Present,  Aug.  83 
Coleman,    Ornetfe,    Jazz    Player, 

Oct.  69 

COLLEGE    SCENE   SUPPLEMENT, 
Oct.   119-182 

Boroli,    Da\id  —  Eager    Swartiunorc, 

139 
"Clhancc  What  Comes"— Christoplier 

Hoi)son,  177 
Ciiasc,   Ridiard—  Ihe   New  Cam])us 

Magazines,  168 
"Classroom,    The   Wasted"  —  .Nathan 

(.lazcr,  147 
"C:ommon  Predicament.  1  he  "—  Judy 

Roses,  145 
DeMott,    Benjamin—  How     Iluy 

Might  Teach,  153 


DeVree,    Charlotte  —  The    Young 

Negro  Rebels,  133 
"Eager  Swarthmore"  —  David  Boroff . 

139 
"Examination,   The"  —  W.   D.   Snod- 

grass,  154 
Glazer,  Nathan  —  The  Wasted  Class- 
room, 147 
"God     in     the     Colleges"  —  Michael 

Novak,  173 
Hobson,  Christopher  —  Chance  What 

Comes,  177 
"How    They    Might    Teach"  —  Ben- 
jamin DeMott,  153 
Illustrations  —  David  Attie,  120,  131, 
137,  148,  161;  Norma-Jean  Koplin. 
154 
Jencks,    Christopher  —  The    Next 

Thirty  Years  in  the  Colleges,  121 
Levine,  Milton  I.  and  Maya  Pines  — 
Sex:    The    Problem    the    Colleges 
Evade,  129 
McCorquodale,    Marjorie  —  What 

They'll  Die  for  in  Houston,  179 
"Mirage  of  College  Politics"— Philip 

Rieff,  156 
"Negro  Rebels,  The  Young"  —  Char- 
lotte DeVree,  133 
"New    Campus    Magazines,    The"  — 

Richard  Chase,  168 
"Next  Thirty  Years  in  the  Colleges, 

The"  —  Christopher  Jencks,  121 
Novak,    Michael  — God    in    the    Col- 
leges, 173 
Pines,  Maya  —  Sex:  The  Problem  the 

Colleges  Evade,  129 
"Polish    Student    Life,    Notes    on"  — 

Reuel  K.  Wilson,  164 
"Politics,  The  Mirage  of  College"  — 

Philip  Rieff,  156 
Rieff,  Philip  —  The  Mirage  of  College 

Politics,  156 
Roses.  Judy  —  The  Common  Predica- 
ment, 145 
"Sex:     The     Problem     the     Colleges 
Evade"  —  Milton     I.     Levine    and 
Maya  Pines,  129 
Snodgrass,  W.  D.  — The  Examination, 

154 
"Swarthmore,  Eager"  —  David  Boroff, 

139 
"Wasted   Classroom,   The"  —  Nathan 

Glazer,  147 
"What  They'll  Die  for  in  Houston"  — 

Marjorie  McCorquodale,  179 
Wilson,  Rcuel  K.  —  Notes  on  Polish 

Student  Life,  164 
"Young    Negro    Rebels"  —  Charlotte 
DeVree,  133 

"Colleges,  The  Next  Thirty  Years 
IN  the"  — Christopher  Jencks,  Oct. 
121 

"Comeback  of  the  State  Depart- 
ment" —  Joseph  Kraft,  Nov.  43 

"Comedy,  The  Future,  If  Any,  of" 
—  James  Thurber,  Dec.  40 

COMMUNISM 

"Guinean  Diary."  Dec.  69 

"Polish  Student  Life,  Notes  on,"  Oct. 

164 
Yugoslavia,  July  10;  Aug.  11 

Conservative  Movement  in  Pol- 
itics, Nov.  98 

Cope,  Jack— The  Man  Who  Doubted, 
Aug.  54 

Corke,  Hilary— A  Psychiatrist's  Song, 
Aug.  58 

"Corsica  Out  of  Season"  — Wallace 
Stegner,  Oct.  76 

Country-City  Living,  Problems  in, 
Sept.  33 


COVERS  XooYoO 

July  —  Ben  Robinson 
August  —  Charles  Goslin 
September  —  Janet  Halverson 
October  —  Charles  Goslin 
November  —  Martin  Rosenzweig 
December  —  Burt  Goldblatt 

CRIME 

"Private  Eye  to  Industry,"  Nov.  61 
"Violence  in  the  City  Streets,"  Sept.  37 

Cuban  Invasion,  The,  Aug.  83 

"Cult  of  Personality  Comes  to 
the  White  House"  —  William  G. 
Carleton,  Dec.  63 

"Culture  Monopoly  at  Lincoln 
Center"  —  Herbert  Kupferberg, 
Oct.  82 

"Culture-Struck  Canada"  — Russell 
Lynes,  Aug.  16 

Defense  Secretary  Robert  Mc- 
Namara,  Aug.  41 

de  Hartog,  Jan  —  Robinson  Crusoe 
in  Florida,  Aug.  34 

Delius,  Funeral  of  Federick,  Nov. 
89 

"Democracy  and  Its  Discontents" 
—  Irving  Kristol,  Sept.  96 

DeMott,  Benjamin— The  Peace 
Corps'  Secret  Mission,  Sept.  63; 
How  They  Might  Teach,  Oct.  153 

Dennis,  Nigel— A  Blocked  Feed,  Dec. 
79 

Detergents,  Battle  with  Syn- 
thetic, Nov.  94 

DeVree,  Charlotte  —  The  Young 
Negro  Rebels,  Oct.  133 

Discus  —  Music  in  the  Round  —The 
New  Tristan,  July  102;  Stravinsky 
and  Poulenc  Conducting,  Aug.  94; 
Leonard  Bernstein,  the  American 
Offenbach?,  Sept.  104;  Bela  Bar- 
tok,  Hungarian  Composer,  Oct. 
116;  The  Illusions  of  Opera,  Nov. 
128;  Masterpieces  of  the  Past,  Dec. 
109 

Drucker,  Peter  F.  —  Plan  for  Revolu- 
tion in  Latin  Ainerica,  July  31 

"Eager  Swarthmore"  —  David  Bor- 
off, Oct.  139 

Eastlake,  William— A  Bird  on  the 
Mesa,  Oct.  57 

EASY  CHAIR,  THE 

"Christmas  List"  — John  Fischer,  Dec. 

15 
"Hamilton,     Hopeful     Letter     to 

Fowler"  —  John  Fischer,  Nov.  12 
"Money   Bait"— John   Fischer,   Sept. 

10 
"Point  of  No  Return"  — John  Fischer. 

July  10 
"Private  vs.  Public  "  —  Henry  E.  Wal- 

lich,  Oct.  12 
"Yugoslavia,    Report    on"  — John 

Fischer,  July  10 
"Yugoslavia's    Flirtation    with    Free 

Enterprise"  — John  Fischer,  Aug.  11 

"Eaton,  Cyrus,  Strange  Romance 
Between  John  L.  Lewis  and"  — 
Nat  Caldwell  and  Gene  S.  Graham, 
Dec.  25 

EDUCATION 

"College  Scene."  Oct.  119-182 
"Howard  University,"  Nov.  51 
"Quebec's  Revolt  Against  the  Cath- 
olic Schools,"  July  53 
Spare  Time  Educators,  Dec.  15 


Teacher  Award,  Dec.  19 
"Teachers  College,"  July  82 

Elliot  Lake,  Canada,  Sept.  81 
Engel,    Leonard  —  Why    We    Don't 

Wipe  Out  Polio,  Sept.  77 
Evans,   Rowland  —  India   Experi- 
ments with  Sterilization,  Nov.  79 
Fanny,  Filming  of,  July  14 
"Feiffer,  Jules,  and  the  Almost- 
in-Group"  —  Julius  Novick,  Sept. 
58 

FICTION 

"Bird  on  the  Mesa,  .\"— William  East- 
lake,  Oct.  57 

"Blocked  Feed,  A"  —  Nigel  Dennis, 
Dec.  79 

"In  the  Company  of  Runners"— Rich- 
ard Rogin.  Nov.  68 

"Man  Who  Doubted,  The"  —  Jack 
Cope,  Aug.  54 

"Mr.  Future"  —  Leo  Rosten,  Sept.  48 

"Summer  Is  .Another  Country"  — 
Christine  Weston,  July  27 

FILLERS 

"New  Frontiers  of  Science,"  Oct.  42 
"Common    Predicament,   The,"   Oct. 

145 
"Dike  and  the  Village.  The,"  Sept.  68 
"Faith  for  Tough  Times?"  Sept.  32 
"New  Frontiers  of  Science,"  Oct.  42 
"Same  Johnny,"  Dec.  62 
"Stolen  Visit  to  the  Theatre,"  Nov.  86 

Fischer,  John  —  Puzzled  Report  on 
Yugoslavia,  July  10;  Yugoslavia's 
Flirtation  with  Free  Enterprise, 
Aug.  11;  Money  Bait,  Sept.  10; 
Hopeful  Letter  to  Fowler  Hamil- 
ton, Nov.  12;  Christmas  List,  Dec. 
15 

"Florida,  Robinson  Crusoe  in"  — 
Jan  de  Hartog,  Aug.  34 

"Footnote-and-Mouth  Disease"  — 
Helene  Hanff,  July  58 

Foreign-Aid  Program,  Nov.  12 

FOREIGN  AFFAIRS  AND  PLACES 

"Canada,  Culture-Struck,"  Aug.  16 

"Canada's  Luxury  Ghost  Town," 
Sept.  81 

"Corsica  Out  of  Season."  Oct.  76 

Fanny,  Filming  of,  July  14 

"Guinean  Diary,"  Dec.  69 

"Hamilton,  Hopeful  Letter  to 
Fowler,"  Nov.  12 

Honduras,  Aug.  63 

"India,  Galbraith  in,  "  Dec.  46 

"India  Experiments  with  Steriliza- 
tion," Nov.  79 

"Latin  America,  Plan  for  Revolution 
in,"  July  31 

"National  Talent  for  Offending 
People,  Our,"  Aug.  63 

"Polish  Student  Life.  Notes  on,"  Oct. 
164 

"Quebec's  Revolt  Against  the  Cath- 
olic Schools,"  July  53 

"State  Department,  Comeback  of," 
Nov.  43 

Yugoslavia,  July  10,  .^ug.  II 

FRANCE 

Fanny,  Filming  of,  July  21 

"Future,  If  Any,  of  Comedy,  The" 
—  James  Thurber,  Dec.  40 

"Galbraith  in  India"— Kusum  Nair, 
Dec.  46 

"Game  of  Words,  The  "  —  Louis  B. 
Salomon,  Nov.  40 

Giants'  Baseball  Park,  Aug.  25 


Glazer,  Nathan  —The  Wasted  Class- 
room, Oct.  147 

"God  in  the  Colleges"  —  Michael 
Novak,  Oct.  173 

"Good  Old  Summertime"  — William 
S.  White,  Aug.  83 

GOVERNMENT  AND  POLITICS 

"America  Under  Pressure,"  Aug.  21 
"C.I.A.,  My  Escape  from  the,"  Oct.  43 
"Cult   of   Personality   Comes   to   the 

White  House,"  Dec.  63 
"Galbraith  in  India."  Dec.  46 
"Good  Old  Summertime,  The,"  .Aug. 

83 
"Hamilton.     Hopeful     Letter     to 

Fowler,"  Nov.  12 
"Houston's  Superpatriots."  Oct.  48 
"Kennedy  Back  in  the  Senate,  How 

to  Put."  Dec.  84 
Kennedy  s  Cabinet,  Sept.  92 
"Kennedy's  Economists,"  Sept.  25 
"Lady  from  Oregon,"  Oct.  98 
"Latin  America,  Plan  for  Revoliuion 

in,"  July  31 
"McXamara  and  His  Enemies,"  -Aug. 

41 
"Mirage  of  College  Politics,"  Oct.  1.56 
"New  Irresponsibles,  The,"  Nov.  98 
"New  York  Is  Different,"  July  39 
"Our  National  Talent  for  Offending 

People,  "  -Aug.  63 
"Peace  Corps'  Secret  Mission,"  Sept. 

63 
"Private  vs.  Public  Spending,"  Oct.  12 
"State    Department,    Comeback    of,  ' 

Nov.  43 
Surrogate's  Court,  Operation  of,  Aug. 

Taxpayer's  Dilemma,  .Aug.  71 
"\Velfare  Mess,  a  \Vav  Out  of  the," 
Oct.  37 

Graham,  Gene  S.  and  Nat  Caldwell 

—The  Strange  Romance  Between 

Cyrus  Eaton  and   John  L.  Lewis, 

Dec.  25 
Graves,  Robert  —  Burn  It:,  Dec.  49 
"GuiNEAN  Diary"  —  W.  E.  Bullard, 

Dec.  69 
Halliday,  Norman— The  Proper 

Tool  Will  Do  the  Job,  Oct.  80 
Hanff,  Helene— The  Footnote-and- 

Mouth  Disease,  July  58 
"Heirs,  Your  Unknown  "— Murray 

Teigh  Bloom,  Aug.  29 
"Hinds,  The  Search  for  \Villiam 

E."  —  Walter  Prescott  \Vebb,  Julv 

July  62;  Nov.  21 
History  Today,  Writing  of,   Oct. 

104 
Hobson,  Christopher  — Chance  What 

Comes,  Oct.  177 
Holland,    Henrietta    Fort  —  Our 

Friends  the  Russians,  Oct.  97 
Honduras,  The  "Ugly  American" 

IN,  Aug.  63 
"Houston,  What  They'll  Die  for 

in"— Marjorie  K.  McCorquodale, 

Oct.  179 
"Houston's  Superpatriots"  — Willie 

Morris,  Oct.  48 
"How  Not  to  Build  a  Ball  Park" 

—  Allan  Temko,  .Aug.  25 
"How  They  Might  Teach  '  —  Ben- 
jamin DeMott,  Oct.  153 
"How  to  Destroy  the  Churches"  — 

Edmond  Cahn,  Nov.  33 
"How  to  Play  the  Unemployment- 
Insurance  Game"  —  Seth  Levine, 

Aug.  49 


"Howard    University"—  Milton 

Viorst,  Nov.  51 
Howarth.  David  — The  Last  Summer, 

Nov.  89 
Hughes,  Ted  —  Her  Husband,  Dec. 

28 
Hunt,  Morton  M.  —  Private  Eye  to 

Industry,  Nov.  61 

ILLUSTRATORS 

-Attie,  David  —  Photographs  for  Col- 
lege Scene.  Oct.  119-181 
Banbery,    Frederick    E.  —  The    Man 

Who  Doubted,  .Aug.  54 
Berry,   Bill  —  How   to   Play   the   Un- 

emplovment-Insurance  Game,  Aug. 

49 
Bodecker.  N.  M.  —  .After  Hours,  Julv 

14;  Aug.  16;  Sept.  21;  Oct.  30;  Nov. 

26;   Dec.  20;  .A  Matter  of  Motive. 

Aug.  71 
Buonpastore,  Tony—  The  Last  Sum- 
mer, Nov.  89 
Burris,   Burmah— On   Both   Your 

Houses,  Sept.  33 
Campbell,    Judy  —  Footnote-and- 

Mouth  Disease,  July  58 
Cartier-Bresson,  Henri  —  On  the  .Art 

of  Photography,  Nov.  73 
Enos,     Randall  —  Teachers    College, 

July  82 
Feelings,    Thomas  —  Summer   is   .An- 
other Country,  July  27 
Feiffer,  Jules  —  Cartoon  Strip,  Sept.  62 
Ferro.   Walter  —  Howard   University, 

Nov.  51 
Fischer,   Ed  — Cartoon:    Beggar   V'io- 

linist,  July  102 
Frankfort,    Charles  —  The   Games  of 

AVords,  Nov.  40 
Goldblatt,  Burt  —  The  "New  Thing  " 

in  Jazz,  Oct.  69 
Goodman,  Willard  —  Quebec's  Revolt 

.Against  the  Catholic  Schools,  Jidv 

53 
Goro,     Fritz  —  Photographs     of     the 

Australian  Aborigine,  Sept.  69 
Koplin,     Norma-Jean  —  Mr.    Future, 

Sept.   48;    The   Examination,   Oct. 

154;  Galljraitli  of  India,  Dec.  46 
Martin.    Charles    E.  —  New    York    Is 

Different.  July  39 
Osborn.  Roller t  —  Up   to  Our  Necks 

in  Soft  \Vhite  Suds,  Nov.  94 
Papin,  Joseph  —  Violence  in  the  City 

Streets.  Sept.  37 
Perlin,  Bernard  —  Corsica  Out  of  Sea- 
son, Oct.  76 
Rosenblum,  Richard  —  Pa\  anne  for  a 

Dead  Doll,  Dec.  33 
Rothkin.     Marlene  —  Our     National 

Talent  for  Offending  People,  Aug. 

63 
Simon,  Christopher  — My  Escape  from 

the  C.I.A. ,  Oct.  43 
Summers,   Leo   Ramon  —  Guinean 

Diary,   Dec.   69;    .A   Blocked   Feed. 

Dec.  79 
Thurber,  James  —The  Future.  If  Any. 

of  Comedy,  Dec.  40 
^^"alker.    Gil  —  Robinson    Crusoe    in 

Florida,  -Aug.   34;   .A   Bird  on    the 

Mesa,  Oct.  57;   The  Proper  Tool 

Will  Do  the  Job,  Oct.  80 
Young,  Ed  —  In  the  Company  of  Run- 
ners, Nov.  68 

"In  the  Company  of  Runners"  — 
Richard  Rogin,  Nov.  68 

"India  Experiments  with  Steriliza- 
tion"—Rowland  Evans,  Nov.  79 

"India,  Galbraith  in"  — Kusum  Nair, 
Dec.  46 

Industry,  Lure  to,  Sept.  10 


"Industry,  Private  Eve  to"  —  Morton 

M.  Hunt,  Nov.  61^ 
Internal  Revenue  Department,  Aug. 

71 
"Invisible     .Aborigine,     The"  —  Eu- 
gene Burdick,  Sept.  69 
Jackson,  Katherine  Gauss  — Books  in 

Brief,  July  99;  Aug.  91;  Sept.  101; 

Oct.  HI;  Dec.  102 
Jacobs,  Jane —Violence  in  the  City 

Streets,  Sept.  37 
"Jaspan,  Norman:   Private  Eye  to 

Industry"  —  Morton     M.     Hunt, 

Nov.  61 
"Jazz,  'The  New  Thing'  in"— Mar- 
tin Williams,  Oct.  69 
"Jazz  Notes"— Eric  Larrabee,  Julv 

104;  Aug.  95;  Sept.  105;  Oct.  118; 

Nov.  133;  Dec.  112 
Jencks,   Christopher  —  The   Next 

Thirty  Years  in  the  Colleges,  Oct. 

121 
Kazin,  .\lfred  — Notes  on  the  W'riting 

of  History  Today,  Oct.  104 

Kennedy,  President  John  F. 

"Good  Old  Summertime,"  Aug.  83 
"Kennedy  Back  in  the  Senate,  How 

to  Put!"  Dec.  84 
"Kennedy's  Economists,"  Sept.  25 
"Twelve  at  Table,"  Sept.  92 

Kotlowitz,  Robert  — Monk  Talk, 

Sept.  21 
Kraft,  Joseph  —  McNamara  and  His 

Enemies,  Aug.   41;    Comeback   of 

the  State  Dept.,  Nov.  43 
Krauss,  Ruth  —Variations  on  a  Leica 

Form,  Oct.  88 
Kristol,  Irving  —  Democracy  and  Its 

Discontents,  Sept.  96 
Kunitz,  Stanley  —  Some  Poets  of  the 

Year,  .Aug.  86 
Rupferberg,  Herbert  —  Culture  Mo- 
nopoly at  Lincoln  Center,  Oct.  82 

LABOR 

"How    to    Play    the    Unemployment- 
Insurance  Game,"  .Aug.  49 

"Lady  from  Oregon '  — William  S. 
\Vhite.  Oct.  98 

Laing,  Dilys  — The  Husking,  Sept.  67 

Language,  The  Vagaries  of,  Nov. 
40 

Larrabee,  Eric— Jazz  Notes,  July  104; 
Aug.  95;  Sept.  105;  Oct.  118;  Nov. 
133;  Dec.  112 

"Last  Summer,  The"  —  David  Ho- 
warth, Nov.  89 

"Latin-.4merica,  a  Plan  for  Revo- 
lution in"—  Peter  F.  Drucker,  July 
31 

LAW,  THE 

"Yoiir  Unknown  Heirs,"  -Aug.  29 

LETTERS July  4;  .Aug.  6;  Sept.  4; 

Oct.  6;  Nov.  4;  Dec.  4 

Levertov,  Denise— The  Thread, 
Sept.  80 

Levine,  Milton  I.  — Sex:  The  Prob- 
lem the  Colleges  Evade,  Oct.  1 29 

Levine,  Seth  —  How  to  Play  the  Un- 
employment-1  nsurancc  Game, 
Aug.  49 


"Lewis,  John  L.  and  Cyrus  Eaton, 
Strange  Romance  Between"  — 
Nat  Caldwell  and  Gene  S.  Graham, 
Dec.  25 

Lincoln  Center  for  the  Perform- 
ing Arts,  Oct.  82 

Logan,  Joshua  —  My  Invasion  of 
Marseilles,  July  14 

Lowell,  Robert  —  Free  Version  ol 
Seven  Poems  by  Boris  Pasternak, 
Sept.  44 

Lynes,  Russell  — Culture-Struck  Can- 
ada, Aug.  16;  Trade  Catalogues, 
Oct.  32  ' 

"Magazines,  The  New  Campus"  — 
Richard  Chase,  Oct.  168 

"Man  Who  Doubted,  The"  —  Jack 
Cope,  Aug.  54 

Maryland  Restaurant  Keepers, 
Dec.  16 

"Master  Journalist  of  American 
Fiction"— Louis  Audiindoss,  Nov. 
124 

"Matter  of  Motive,  A"  —  John  I). 
Rosenberg,  Aug.  71 

Maxtone  Graham,  J.  A.  —  (lar  lor 
Sale,  Nov.  26 

May,  Edgar  — A  Way  Out  ol  ihc  Wel- 
fare Mess.  Oct.  37 

McCarthy,  Mary -"Realism"  in  the 
American    liieatre,  July  45 

McCorquodale,  Marjorie  K.  —  What 
rhcv'll  Die  lor  in  Houston,  Oct. 
179  ' 

"McNamara  and  His  Enemies"  — 
Joseph  Kraft,  Aug.  4  1 

MEDICINE  AND  HEALTH 

Dclcrgenls.  Syntlictic,  Nov.  94 
"India    Exijeriincnts    with    Stciili/a- 

lion,"  Nov.  79 
"Polio,  Why   \A'e   Don't   Wipe  Out," 

Sept.  77 

Menashe,  Samuel —Voyage,  Aug.  77 

"Mirage  of  College  Politics,  The" 
-  Philip  Riefit,  Oct.  156 

"Money  Bait"  —  John  Fischer,  Sept. 
10 

"Monk  Talk"  —  Robert  Kotlowit/, 
Sept.  21 

"Moon,  The  Uses  of  the"  — .Arthur 
C.  Clarke,  Dec.  56 

Morris,  Willie  —  Houston's  Super- 
patriots,  Oct.  48 

MOVIES 

"My  Invasion  of  Marseilles,  "  July  14 

"Mr.  Future"— Leo  Rosten,  Sept.  48 

MUSIC 

"Jazz  Notes,"  July  104;  Aug.  95;  Sept. 

104;  Oct.  118;  Nov.  133;  Dec.  112 
"Jazz,  'The  New  Thing'  in,"  Oct.  69 
"Monk  Talk,"  Sept.  21;  Oct.  70 
"Music  in  the  Round,  "  July  102;  .^ug. 

94;  Sept.  104;  Oct.   116;' Nov.  128; 

Dec.  109 

"My    Escape    from    the    C.LA."  — 

Hughes  Rudd,  Oct.  43 
"My    Invasion    of    Marseilles"  — 

Joshua  Logan,  July  14 
Nair,  Kusum  —  Dike  and  the  Village, 

Sept.  68;  Galbraith  in  India,  Dec. 

46 
Nash,  Ogden  —  Pavanne  for  a  Dead 

Doll,  Dec.  33 


"National  Talent  for  Offending 
People,  Our"— D.  H.  Radler,  Aug. 
63 

NEGRO 

"Howard  University,  "  Nov.  51 
"Young  Negro  Rebels,"  Oct.  133 

Nemerov,     Howard— The    Daily 

Globe,  Nov.  39 
Neuberger,  Sen.  Maurine,  Oct.  98 

NEW  BOOKS,  THE 

".'\rt  Books"  —  Leo  Steinberg,  Dec.  87 

"Democracy  and  Its  Discontents  "  — 
Irving  Kristol,  Sept.  96 

"Fiction,  Non-Fiction,  Pseudo-Fic- 
tion" —  Paul  Pickrel,  Nov.  109 

"History  Today,  Notes  on  the  Writing 
of" -Alfred  Kazin,  Oct.  104 

"Poets  of  the  Year,  Some  "  —  Stanley 
Kimit/,  Aug.  86 

"Summer  Fiction  "  — Paul  Piekrel, 
July  91 

"New  Campus  Magazines"— Richard 
Chase,  Oct.  164 

"New  Irresponsibles,  The"  —  Wil- 
liam S.  White,  Nov.  98 

"  'New  I  hing'  in  Jazz,  The"—  Mar- 
tin Williams,  Oct.  69 

"New  Vision  in  .Architecture,  Fhe  ' 

—  Robin  Boyd,  July  73 

"New  York  City  and  the  Aris"  Oct. 
82 

"New  York  Is  Different"  — Marion 
K.  Sanders,  July  39 

New  York  Politics,  July  39 

"Next  Thirty  Years  in  the  Col- 
leges, The"  — Christopher  Jencks, 
Oct.  121 

"Notes  on  Polish  Student  Life"  — 
Rcuel  K.  Wilson,  Oct.  164 

"NorES  on  the  Writing  of  History 
Today"  —  .Alfred  Kazin,  Oct.   104 

Novak,  Michael  —  God  in  the  Col- 
leges, Oct.  173 

Novick,  Julius— Jules  Feiffer  and  the 
Almost-in-Group,  Sept.  58 

"Offending  People,  Our  National 
Talent  for"  — D.  H.  Radler,  .Aug. 
63 

"Old  Junior's  Progress"  —  William 
S.  White,  July  88 

"On  Both  Your  Houses"  —  Sylvia 
Wright,  Sept.  33 

"Oregon,  The  Lady  from"  —  Wil- 
liam S.  White,  Oct.  98 

"Our  National  Talent  for  Of- 
fending People"  —  D.  H.  Radler, 
Aug.  63 

Pasternak,  Boris  — Seven  Poems, 
Sept.  44 

"Peace  Corps'  Secret  Mission,  The" 

—  Benjamin  DeMott,  Sept.  63 

PEOPLE 

Bartok,  Bela,  Composer,  Oct.  116 
Bowles,  Chester,  State  Dept.,  Nov.  48 
Caron,  Leslie,  .Actress,  July  14 
Coleman,  Ornette,  Jazz  Player,  Oct.  69 
Delius,  Frederick,  Composer,  Nov.  89 
Dillon,  Douglas,  Secretary  of  Treas- 
ury. .Sept.  25 
Eaton,  Cyrus,  Utility  Magnate,  Dec. 

25 
Ernst,  Morris,  Lawyer,  Dec.  19 
Feiffer,  Jules,  Cartoonist,  Sept.  58 
Friedan,  Betty,  Educator,  Dec.  15 
Galbraith,  J.  Kenneth,  .Ambassador  to 
India,  Dec.  46 


Hamilton,  Fowler,  Director  Foreign 
Aid,  Nov.  12 

Heller,  Walter  W.,  Council  Economic 
Advisors,  Sept.  25 

Hinds,  William  E.,  Benefactor,  Tulv 
62 

Jaspan,  Norman,  Management  Con- 
sultant, Nov.  61 

Kennedy,  John  F.,  President,  Aug.  83; 
Sept.  25;  Dec.  63 

Knopf,  Alfred  .\.,  Publisher,  Dec.  16 

Lasker,  Mary,  Dec.  16 

Lawrence,  Dorothy  Bell,  Politician, 
Dec.  16 

Lewis,  John  E.,  United  Mine  Workers, 
Dec.  25 

Love,  Edmund  C,  Writer,  Dec.  15 

McNamara,  Robert,  Secretary  of  De- 
fense, Aug.  41 

Monk,  Thelonious.  Jazz  Pianist,  Sept. 
21;  Oct.  70 

Neuberger.  Maurine,  Senator,  Oct.  98 

Potter,  Justin,  Coal  Mine  Owner, 
Dec.  25 

Romaine,  Lawrence  B.,  Bookseller, 
Oct.  32 

Rusk,  David  Dean,  Secretary  of  State, 
Nov.  45 

Perrin,     Noel  —  "You    Tell    Them, 

Pop,"  Dec.  20 
"Per.sonality  Comes  to  the  White 

House,    Cult    of"  —  William    G. 

Carleton,  Dec.  63 
"Photography,  On  the  Art  of"  — 

Henri  Cartier-Bresson,  Nov.  73 
"Physics,    Uncanny    World    of 

Plasma,"  Oct.  64 
Pickrel,  Paul  — Summer  Fiction,  July 

91;   Fiction,  Non-Fiction,  Pseudo- 
Fiction,  Nov.  109 
Pines,  Maya  — Sex:  The  Problem  the 

Colleges  Evade,  Oct.   129;  Up  to 

Our   Necks   in    Soft   White   Suds, 

Nov.  94 
"Plan    for    Revolution    in    Latin 

.America,  A"  —  Peter  F.  Drucker, 

July  31 
"Plasma  Physics,  Uncanny  World 

OF,"  Oct.  64 

POETRY 

"Burn  It!"  —  Robert  Graves.  Dec.  49 
"Chance  What  Comes"  — Christopher 

Hobson,  Oct.  177 
"Daily     Globe,     The"  —  Howard 

Nemerov,  Nov.  39 
"Examination,   The  "  —  W.   D.   Snod- 

grass,  Oct.  154 
"God  Opens  His  Mail" —Larry  Rubin, 

July  61 
"Her  Husband"  — Ted  Hughes,  Dec. 

28 
"Husking,  The"  —  Dilys  Laing,  Sept. 

67 
"Our  Friends  the  Russians"  —  Henri- 
etta Fort  Holland,  Oct.  97 
"Pavanne  for  a  Dead  Doll"  —  Ogden 

Nash,  Dec.  33 
"Psychiatrist's  Song  "  —  Hilary  Corke, 

Aug.  58 
"Rival"  —  Phyllis  Rose,  Nov.  50 
Seven    Poems    of    Boris    Pasternak  — 

New   Versions   by   Robert   Lowell, 

Sept.  44 
"Thread,     The"  —  Denise     Lev  ertov, 

Sept.  80 
"To  a  Friend  Whose  Work  Has  Come 

to  Triumph"  —  Anne  Sexton,  Nov. 

93 
"Variations  on  a  Leica  Form  "—  Ruth 

Krauss,  Oct.  88 
"Vermont"  —  John  Updike,  July  67 
"Voyage"  — Samuel  ^Ienashe,  .Aug.  77 


"Point  of   no   Return?'"  —  John 

Fischer,  July  10 
"Poets  of  the  Year,  Some"— Stanley 

Kunitz,  Aug.  86 
"Polio,  Why  We  Don't  Wipe  Out" 

—  Leonard  Engel,  Sept.  77 
"Polish  Student  Life,  Notes  on," 

Oct.  164 
Politics.  See  under  Govenirneut. 
Presidents,  How  to  Use  Our  Ex-. 

Dec.  84 
"Private  Eye  to  Industry,  Norman 

Jaspan"—  Morton  M.  Hunt,  Nov. 

61 
"Private    vs.    Public"  —  Henry    E. 

Wallich,  Oct.  12 
Probate  Court,  Aug.  29 
"Proper  Tool  Will  Do  the   Job, 

The"—  Norman  Halliday,  Oct.  80 

PUBLIC  &  PERSONAL 

William  S.  White 

"Kennedy  Back  in  the  Senate,  How  to 

Put,"  Dec.  84 
"Lady  from  Oregon,"  Oct.  98 
"New  Irresponsibles,"  Nov.  98 
"Old  Junior's  Progress,"  July  88 
"Summertime,  Good  Old,"  Aug.  S3 
"Twelve  at  Table,"  Sept.  92 

Public  Opinion  Poll,  1774.  Dec.  20 
Public  vs.  Private  Spending,  Oct.  12 
"Quebec's  Revolt  Against  the 
Catholic  Schools"  —  Miriam 
Chapin,  July  53 
Radler,  D.  H.  — Our  National  Talent 

lor  Offending  People,  Aug.  63 
"  'Realism'  in  the  American  Thea- 
tre"— Mary  McCarthy,  July  45 

RELIGION 

"God  in  the  Colleges,"  Oct.  17.3 
"How  to  Destrov  the  Churclies,"  Nov. 

33 
"Quebec's  Revolt  Against   the  C'atli- 

olic  Schools,"  July  53 

Research,  Historical,  July  58 

Richey,  Elinor  — What  Chicago 
Could  Be  Proud  Of,  Dec.  34 

Rieff,  Philip  —  The  Mirage  of  Col- 
lege Politics,  Oct.  156 

Right  Wing  Movement  in  Politics, 
Nov.  98 

"Robinson  Crusoe  in  Florida"— Jan 
de  Hartog,  Aug.  34 

Rogin,  Richard  —  In  the  Company  of 
Runners.  Nov.  68 

Rose,  Phyllis  -  Rival,  Nov.  50 

Rosenberg,  John  D.  —  Matter  of  Mo- 
tive, Aug.  71 

Roses,  Judy —  The  Common  Predica- 
ment, Oct.  145 

Rosten,  Leo  —  Mr.  Future,  Sept.  48 

Rowen,  Hobart  —  Kennedy's  Econo- 
mists, Sept.  25 

Rubin,  Larry  — God  Opens  His  Mail, 
July  61 

Rudd,  Hughes  — My  Escape  from  the 
C.I.A.,  Oct.  43 

Salomon,  Louis  B.  —  The  Game  of 
Words,  Nov.  40 

Sanders,  Marion  K.  —  New  York  Is 
Different,  July  39 

Sa.n  Francisccj  Ball  Park,  Aug.  25 


SCIENCE  AND  INVENTION 

"Moon,  Uses  of  the,"  Dec.  56 
"Plasma  Phvsics,  Uncannv  World  of,  " 
Oct.  64 

"Search    for    William    E.    Hinds, 

The"— Walter  Prescott  Webb,  July 

62 
"Sex:   The  Problem  the  Colleges 

Evade"  —  Milton    I.    Levine    and 

Maya  Pines,  Oct.  129 
Sexton,  Anne— To  a  Friend  Whose 

Work  Has  Come  to  Triumph,  Nov. 

93 
Snodgrass,  W.  D.— The  Examination. 

Oct.  154 
"Society  and  Art"  — Kenneth  Clark, 

Aug.  74 

SOVIET  RUSSIA 

"Uses  of  the  Moon,"  Dec.  56 

"State  Department,  Comeback  of 

the"— Joseph  Kraft,  Nov.  43 
Steamship  Begonia  Belle,  Oct.  80 
Stegner,    Wallace  —  Corsica    Out   of 

Season,  Oct.  76 
Steinberg,  Leo— Art  Books,  1960-61, 

Dec.  87 
"Sterilization,   India   Experiments 

with"  —  Rowland  Evans,  Nov.  79 
Stevenson,  Adlai  E.— America  Under 

Pressure,  Aug.  21 
Stock  Market,  July  21 
"Strange  Romance  Between  John 

L.  Lewis  and  Cyrus  Eaton"  — Nat 

Caldwell    and    Gene    S.    Graham, 

Dec.  25 
"Summer    Fiction"  —  Paul    Pickrel, 

July  91 
"Summer   Is  Another  Country"  — 

Christine  Weston,  July  27 
Surrogate's  Court,  Aug.  29 
"Swarthmore,  Eager"  — David  Bor 

off,  Oct.  139 
Taxpayer's  Dilemma,  Aug.  71 
"Teach,  How  They  M/g/;/"— Ben- 
jamin DeMott,  Oct.  153 
"Teachers    College:    An    Extinct 

Volcano"  —  Miriam     Borgenicht, 

July  82 
Temko,  Allan  —  How  Not  to  Build 

a  Ball  Park,  Aug.  25 
Texas,  Oct.  48,  179 

THEATRE 

Lincoln  Center,  New  York,  Oct.  82 
"  'Realism'  in  the  American  Theatre," 
July  45 

Thurber,  James  —  The  Futiue,  If 
Any,  of  Comedy,  Dec.  40 

"Twelve  at  the  Table"  — William 
S.  White,  Sept.  92 

"Uncanny  World  of  Plasma  Phys- 
ics, The"— John  L.  Chapman,  Oct. 
64 

UNEMPLOYMENT 

"Kennedy's  Economists,"  Sept.  25 
"Strange  Romance  Between   John  L. 

Lewis  and  Cyrus  Eaton,"  Diec.  25 
"Unemployment  -  Insurance     Game," 

Aug.  49 

"Unemployment-Insurance    Game, 
How  TO  Play  the"  — Seth  Levine, 
Aug.  49 
United  Mine  Workers,  Dec.  25 
United  States  Peace  Corps,  Sept.  63 


United  States  Under  Pressure,  .Aug. 

21 
"Up  to  Our  Necks  in  Soft  White 

Suds"  —  Maya  Pines,  Nov.  94 
Updike,  John —Vermont,  July  67 
"Uses  of  the  Moon,  'Fhe"- Arthur 

C.  Clarke,  Dec.  56 
"Violence  in  the  City  Streets"  — 

Jane  Jacobs,  Sept.  37 
Viorst,  Milton  — Harvard  Universitv, 

Nov.  51 
"Wall  Street  Amateurs,  .\  Warn- 
ing to"  —  Peter  B.  Bart,  July  21 
Wallich,  Henry  E.— "Private  I's.  Pul)- 

lic,"  Oct.  12 
Washington,  D.  C,  Aug.  83;  Sept. 

92:  Oct.  98;  Nov.  98:  Dec.  84 
"Wasted  Classroom,  The"— Nathan 

Glazer,  Oct.  147 
"Way  Out  of  the  Welfare  Mess. 

A"  — Edgar  May,  Oct.  37 
Webb,  Walter  Prescott  —  Search  lor 

William  E.  Hinds,  July  62 
"Welfare  Mess,  a  Way  Out  of  the" 

—  Edgar  May,  Oct.  37 

Weston,  Christine  —  Summer  Is  .An- 
other Country,  July  27 

Westport,  Connecticut,  Dec.  15 

"What  Chicago  Could  Be  Proud 
of"  — Elinor  Richey,  Dec.  34 

"What  They'll  Die  for  in  Hous- 
ton" —  Marjorie  McCorquodale, 
Oct.  179 

White,  William  S.  -  (Public  &  Per- 
'sonal)  —  Old  Junior's  Progress, 
July  88;  The  Good  Old  Summer- 
time, Aug.  83;  Twelve  at  the 
Table,  Sept.  92;  Lady  from  Ore- 
gon, Oct.  98;  The  New  Irresponsi- 
bles, Nov.  98:  How  to  Put  Ken- 
nedy Back  in  the  Senate,  Dec.  84 

"Why  We  Don't  Wipe  Out  Polio" 

—  Leonard  Engel,  Sept.  77 
Williams,     Martin  —  "The    New 

Thing"  in  Jazz,  Oct.  69 
Wilson,  Reuel  K.  —  Notes  on  Poiisli 

Student  Life,  Oct.  164 
"Words,  The  Game  of"— Louis  B. 

Salomon,  Nov.  40 
Wright,     Sylvia  —  On     Botii     Your 

Houses,  Sept.  33 

WRITING  AND  PUBLISHING 

Books,  See  also  under 

"Campus  Magazines,  The  New,"  Oct. 

168 
"Footnote-and-Mouth   Disease,"    July 

58 
"History    Today,    Writing    of.  "    Oct. 

104 

"You  Tell  Them,  Pop" -Noel  Per- 
rin,  Dec.  20 

"Young  Negro  Rebels,  The"— Char- 
lotte DeVree,  Oct.  133 

Younger  Generation,  The,  July  88 

"Your  Unknown  Heirs"  —  Murray 
1  eigh  Bloom,  Aug.  29 

YUGOSLAVIA 

"Puzzled  Report  on  Yugoslavia,"  July 

iO 
"Yugoslavia's     Flirtation     wiili     Free 

Fiuerprisc,"  Aug.  1 1 

Yuletide  Greeting.  Rules  for,  Dec. 
22 


JULY  1961    SIXTY  CENTS 


ft 


ers 

magazine 


\ 


TEACHERS  COLLEGE: 
EXTINCT  VOLCANO? 

iriam  Borgenicht 


A  PLAN  FOR  REVOLUTION 
IN  LATIN  AMERICA 

Peter  F.  Drucker 

'REALISM'  IN  THE 
AMERICAN  THEATRE 

Mary  McCarthy 


A 
WARNING 

TO 
WALL 

STREET 

AMATEURS 


THE  NEW  VISION 


N  ARCHITECTURE 


m 


obin  Boyd 


Peter  B.  Bart 


<3 


i 


iwo  m- 


w  nisKies 


»  e  « 


The  individual  flavour  of 
each  has  stood  the  test  of 
time  since  1627,  both  from 
the  House  of  Haig,  oldest 
scotch  whisky  distillers . . . 


Quality  rims  m  tlie  laiiniy. 


i 


BOTTLED    IN    SCOTLAND 


Uont   De  V^ifJUfJ  .  ,  .  r/wA    /o/    ll'iig   C.   I  hue/   •   bi  ihuctj    oLOIh    WHISKY,  otj.H    fMUjOl    •    RENI^IELD    IMPORTERS.    LTD..     J.  Y. 


TEACHING   BY  TV 

Bell  System  facilities  meet  a  new  need.  Already  a  vital  link  in  filling 
educators'  requirements  within  a  locality,  state  or  across  the  nation 


An  interesting  current  devel- 
opment in  education  is  the  use  of 
television  for  instruction— both  in 
classrooms  and  in  the  home. 

Evidence  that  a  shortage  of 
qualified  teachers  is  developing 
coincides  with  the  need  for  some 
way  to  meet  the  awakened  interest 
in  mathematics,  physics,  chem- 
istry, and  education  in  general— 
from  the  elementary  school  to  the 
college  level. 

Many  educators,  in  studying  the 
twin  problems,  are  thinking  more 
and  more  about  the  possibilities 
of  Educational  TV  in  their  teach- 
ing programs. 

In  transmitting  TV  lessons  and 
etures  from  place  to  place,  vari- 
means  are  available.   Closed 
•it   Educational    TV   systems 
'een  schools  may  be  required, 
jonnection  between  broadcast- 
stations  in  different  cities.  Or 
ook-up  between  closed  circuit 
ems  and  one  or  more  broad- 
ing  stations. 

hatever  distribution  of  TV  is 
^ed,  in  city,  county,  state,  or 


HELPING  TO  TEACH  .  .  .  HELPING  TO  LEARN.  Classroom  scene  in  Cortland,  N.  Y. 
This  is  one  of  the  schools  now  using  Educational  TV.  More  than  one  TV  receiver 
can  be  used  where  teachers  wish  to  accommodate  larger  classes  at  one  sitting. 


across  the  country,  the  Bell  Tele- 
phone Companies  are  equipped  to 
provide  it.  They  have  the  facilities 
and  years  of  know-how.  And  the 
on-the-spot  manpower  to  insure 
efficient,  dependable  service. 

For  five  years  now,  the  local 
Bell  Telephone  Company  has  pro- 
vided the  closed  circuit  ETV  net- 
work which  successfully  serves 
thirty-six  schools  in  Washington 
County,  Maryland. 

In  South  Carolina  400  miles  of 
telephone  company  facilities  now 
connect  almost  thirty  schools  in 
eleven  cities.  In  New  York  State, 


they  serve  a  high  school  and  seven 
other  schools  in  the  Cortland  area. 

In  San  Jose,  California,  they 
link  four  schools  with  the  campus 
of  San  Jose  State  College.  And 
in  Anaheim,  California,  eighteen 
schools  are  served  by  TV. 

The  Bell  Telephone  Companies 
believe  that  their  TV  transmission 
facilities  and  their  many  years  of 
experience  can  assist  educators 
who  are  exploring  the  potential 
value  of  Educational  Television. 

They  welcome  opportunities  to 
work  with  those  who  wish  to  utilize 
the  potential  of  Educational  TV. 


BELL   TELEPHONE    SYSTEM 


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MAGA 


ZINI 


PUBLISHED    li\ 
HARPER  &  BROTHERS 


VOL.  223,  NO.   1334 

JULY     1961 


*21 


ARTICLES 


A  Warning  to  Wall  Street  Amateurs,  Peter  B.  Bart 
31      A  Plan  for  Revolution  in  Latin  America,  Peter  F.  Drucker 
39     NeM'  York  Is  Different,  Marion  K.  Sanders 
45     "Realism"  in  the  American  Theatre,  Mary  McCarthy 

53     Quebec's  Revolt  Against  the  Catholic  Schools, 

Miriam  CJiapin 

58     "The  Footnote-and-Mouth  Disease,"  Helene  Hanff 

62     The  Search  for  William  E.  Hinds,  ]\'alter  Prescott  Webb 

73     The  New  Vision  in  Architecture,  Robin  Boyd 

82     Teachers  College:  An  Extinct  Volcano? 

Miriam  Borgenicht 

FICTION 
27     Summer  Is  Another  Country,  Christine  Weston 

VERSE 

61     God  Opens  His  Mail,  Larry  Rubin 
67     Vermont,  John  Updike 

DEPARTMENTS 

4     Letters 

10     The  Editor's  Easy  Chair— point  of  no  return? 

joJin  Fischer 

14     After  Hours,  Joshua  Logan 

88     Public  &  Personal— OLD  junior's  progress, 

Willia7n  S.  White 

91  The  New  Books,  Paul  Pickrel 

99  Books  in  Brief,  Katherine  Gauss  Jackson 

102  Music  in  the  Round,  Discus 

104  Jazz  Notes,  Eric  Larrabee 

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LETTERS 


Oppressed  Angola 

Vo  THE  Editors: 

My  attention  has  been  called  to  "The 
Lingdoni  of  Silence:  The  Truth  about 
ifrica's  Most  Oppressed  Colony"  [May] 
ly  "Anonymous."  .  .  .  Once  the  anonym- 
ty  has  been  established,  on  the  excuse 
hat  the  retired  American  businessman 
lust  be  protected  (protected  from 
.hat?),  the  poison  flows  freely.  ...  In 
:ict— I  am  sorry  to  say— the  article  de- 
:?rves  as  much  credence  as  a  jjoisonous 
nonymous  letter.  But  a  few  pertinent 
oints  must  be  stressed: 

The  intimate  knowledge,  the  imjjlicit 
ssociation,  of  .\nonymous  with  some 
liady  private  dealings  involving  con- 
ract  laborers  in  Angola  kiids  one  to 
onclude  that  the  .American  businessman 
1  question  ("who  has  been  working 
nd  traveling  throughout  Angola  for 
fteen  years")  only  found  his  scruples 
t  a  very  late  date,  and  then  only  for 
lie  purpose  of  peddling  his  tale  to 
Inrper's. 

The  Portuguese  government  is  the 
rst  one  to  recognize  that,  in  flagrant 
iolation  of  the  labor  legislation  in 
))ce,  there  have  been  abuses  l)y  some 
dministrative  officials  and  fdzrtulciros 
n  labor  contracts.  So  much  so  that,  in 
he  last  few  years,  a  number  of  such  offi- 
ials  have  been  dismissed  and  prose- 
utcd  by  the  courts.  One  is  left  to 
,onder  if  the  anonymous  American  busi- 
lessman  (obviously  working  for  a  profit 
n  .Angola)  might  have  been  a  part  of 
uch  shady  dealings— and,  if  not.  why 
e  did  not  report  them  to  the  govern- 
lent  authorities  instead  of  selling  his 
indignation"  now  to  an  American  mag- 
zine.  .  .  . 

When  a  well-known  publication  such 
s  yours  banks  on  its  established  reputa- 
nn  to  promote  and  disseminate  poison- 
lus  reporting  of  the  type  of  "The  King- 
lorn  of  Silence,"  the  question  arises 
whether  the  ultimate  insult  is  against 
'ortugal  or  against  the  dignity  of  .\mer- 
can  journalism.  We  leave  the  answer 
o  your  conscience. 

L.  EsTEVES  Fernandes 

Ambassador  of  Portugal 

Washington,  D.  C. 

The  Angola  report  had  to  he  fjtih- 
ished  anonymously  to  protect  the  lives 
»/  the  author's  informants.  The  author 
s  a  conservative,  ivealthy  businessman, 
vhom  the  Editors  hiwe  known  for  many 
ears;  they  have  complete  confidence  in 


his  judgment  and  responsibility.  Events 
in  Angola  since  the  article  was  published 
have   amply   demonstrated   its  accuracy. 

The  Editors 

I  visited  Angola  in  1933.  I  was  a  col- 
lege student  earning  money  in  the  sum- 
mer as  an  ordinary  seaman  on  the  Amer- 
ican-West .African  Line.  To  my  shame,  I 
had  made  no  attempt  to  bone  up  on  the 
social,  economic,  or  political  back- 
grounds of  the  twenty-odd  colonies  I 
visited.  ...  I  knew  practically  nothing 
about  the  Belgian  and  Portuguese  ad- 
ministrations and  it  was  twenty  more 
years  before  I  learned.  .  .  . 

The  moral  here  is  that  even  well- 
traveled  Americans  skimming  the  tops 
of  backward  countries  either  don't  un- 
derstand or  choose  to  ignore  the  condi- 
tions they  see.  Thousands  of  tourists, 
for  example,  go  to  the  West  Indies 
on  vacation  each  year.  They  have  a 
fine  time,  visit  the  island  in  a  taxi,  and 
go  away  feeling  that  this  is  an  island 
paradise.  They  don't  know  that  .  .  . 
the  cheerful  taxi-drivers  have  slept  all 
night  in  their  cabs  in  order  to  get  a 
shot  at  one  job  from  which  they  will 
kick  Ijack  40  per  cent  of  their  fee  to 
a  concessionaire.  .  .  . 

I  suggest  that  Harper's  engage  in  a 
conscious  policy  to  make  American  tour- 
ists more  aware  of  their  own  social  and 
political  significance  to  the  people  of 
the  countries  they  visit.  I  realize  this 
is  a  hideous  idea  because  I  can't  think 
of  anything  better  calculated  to  spoil 
the  expensive  fun  for  which  the  tourist 
has   saved    his  money.  Ross  McKee 

New  York,  N.  Y. 

Too  Much  Progress? 

To  THE  Editors: 

Russell  Lynes'  article  "Everything's 
Up-to-date  in  Texas  .  .  .  but  Me"  [May] 
is  fine  and  it's  a  pity  Texans  are  de- 
termined to  obliterate  all  the  old  court- 
houses and  mansions,  everything  old 
except  the  Alamo,  I  suppose.  But  un- 
fortunately Texas  is  not  alone  in  bull- 
dozing its  past.  .  .  .  Even  Lincoln's  own 
courthouse  in  Springfield,  Illinois,  is 
threatened.  Detroit's  most  historic  build- 
ing. Old  City  Hall,  is  to  be  torn  down 
this  summer,  over  the  protest  of  many, 
to  make  room  for  an  underground  park- 
ing garage.  ...  If  Detroit  has  to  tear 
down  Old  City  Hall  in  the  name  of 
"progress,"  there  is  something  wrong. 
Our  architectural  past  should  be  loved 
and  respected   as   part  of  our   heritage. 

John  Neukki.d 
East  Lansing,  Mich. 


Bless  you,  Mr.  Lynes,  for  those  not- 
so-kind  words  about  Texas.  For  those 
of  us  who  feel  ourselves  impaled  on  a 
Texas  longhorn  an  article  like  yours 
provides  a  cheery  change  of  sustenance. 
[But]  I  can't  agree  with  you  that  one 
day  Texas  is  going  to  be  sorry,  because 
I  haven't  found  Texans  capable  of  re- 
morse except  in  connection  with  busi- 
ness deals  they  missed  out  on.  .  .  . 

I  found  your  views  helpful  to  my  own 
analysis  of  what  I  had  seen  and  heard 
during  a  recent  trip  to  Colorado  and 
W^yoming,  where  I  had  been  alternately 
awed  by  the  majesty  of  the  land  and 
appalled  by  the  mediocrity  of  what  man 
is  now  putting  up  on  it.  Out  there  he 
can  still  start  from  sagebrush  if  he 
wants  to,  but  he  often  erects  a  worse 
monument  to  himself  than  did  his  un- 
tutored ancestor,  the  pioneer.  My  grim- 
mest shock  came  in  Laramie,  Wyoming, 
a  town  I  have  known  for  years  and 
where  I  once  lived  a  more  satisfying  life 
than  I  have  ever  managed  to  do  in 
Texas.  Laramie  is  now  the  most  archi- 
tecturally offensive  town  I  know.  The 
new  subdivisions  cast  of  town  are  heart- 
breaking examples  of  little  talent  and 
no  taste.  .  .  .  They  have  taken  virgin 
land  and  committed  upon  it  almost 
every  possible  architectural  sin,  often  re- 
fusifig  to  plant  the  trees  that  would  in 
time  provide  protective  foliage  for  the 
most  glaring  architectural  defects.  The 
reason  behind  the  no-landscaping  policy 
is  that  trees  would  block  the  view  of  the 
mountains  in  the  distance.  A  friend,  sug- 
gested that  some  of  the  owners  of  the 
new  houses  had  lived  so  long  in  base- 
ments before  they  could  build  above 
ground  that  they  wanted  to  see  all  the 
sky  possible  when  they  looked  out  their 
new  picture  windows.  .  .  . 

Perhaps  it  isn't  possible  to  travel  the 
U.  S.  without  becoming  saddened  by 
what  is  happening  to  a  land  of  whose 
beauty  wc  arc  supposed  to  sing.  I  drove 
along  the  Mississippi  Gulf  Coast  in 
March  and  stopwatched  the  unspoiled 
stretches  of  it— five  minutes  here,  two 
minutes  there.  And  in  Mobile,  my  home 
town,  I  could  have  hanged  the  city 
fathers  from  the  oaks  over  Government 
Street.  It  would  have  been  just  retribu- 
tion for  the  rape  of  a  once  fair  rue. 

Helen  Yenne 
Dallas,  Tex. 


Censored  Minds 

To  the  Editors: 

In  your  excellent  supplement,  The 
.Mood  of  the  Russian  People  [May], 
much  is  made  of  the  fact  that  what  in- 
ternational news  the  ])eople  receive  is 
carefully  tailored  to  party  purposes. 
Granted.  But  how  much  better  are 
things  here  at  home?  .So  far,  only  those 
who    know    Latin    America    and    Cuba 


Which  frame  is  stronger? 


ours 


others 


Guardrail  construction  in  the  1961  Ford  Family  of  Fine  Cars  has 
greater  rigidity,  offers  the  strength  of  strong  side  rails. 


Ford  Motor  Company 
builds  better  bodies 


Millions  of  car  frames  are  shaped  like 
an  "X."  Weak  in  the  middle,  they 
lack  the  strength  of  strong  side  rails. 
Guardrail  frames  in  the  Ford  and 
Mercury  curve  out.  They  are  strong 
in  the  middle.  Guard  rails  also 
protect  passengers  in  the  unitized 
bodies  used  in  Falcon,  Thunderbird, 
Comet  and  Lincoln  Continental. 


The  underside  of  a  car  body  has 
exposed  parts  that  are  especially  vul- 
nerable now  that  chemical  compounds 
are  used  to  keep  roads  clean  and  dry. 
In  the  Ford  Family  of  Fine  Cars,  the 
most  vulnerable  body  parts  are  gal- 


vanized, zinc-coated  to  protect  them 
against  rust  and  corrosion. 

*  *       * 

Doors  in  the  Ford  Family  of  Fine 
Cars  are  stronger.  They  are  reinforced 
with  steel  beams.  This  means  they  are 
more  rigid  and  therefore  close  tighter 
and  quieter,  reducing  the  likehhood 
of  developing  squeaks  and  rattles. 

*  *       * 

If  you  compare  door  latches,  you  will 
see  that  in  our  cars  they  are  bigger 
and  heavier  than  door  latches  in  other 
cars.  This  makes  for  a  tighter,  stronger 
grip  which  reduces  the  possibiHty  of 
doors  springing  open  under  impact. 
Statistics  show  that  passengers  who 
remain  inside  the  car  in  an  accident 
are  twice  as  safe. 

*  *       * 

One  reason  for  the  unusually  quiet 


ride  in  the  Ford  Family  of  Fine  Cars 
is  the  soundproofed  floors.  Where 
other  cars  have  only  two  layers  of 
sound  insulation,  our  cars  have  three 
layers  of  sound  insulation.  Each  layer 
eliminates  a  different  range  of  sound 
from  rumbles  to  squeaks.  As  a  result, 
very  little  noise  gets  through  to  the 
passenger  compartment. 
*       *       * 

These  are  five  of  the  many  reasons  we 
think  you  will  find  (upon  comparing 
our  cars  with  other  cars)  that  Ford 
Motor  Company  builds  better  bodies. 


American  Road,  Dearborn,  Michigan 


FORD  •  FALCON  -THUNDERBIRD  •  COMET  •  MERCURY  •  LINCOLN  CONTINENTAL 


"Few  things,"  said  Mark  Twain, 
with  deadly  accuracy,  "are  harder 
to  put  up  with  than  the  annoyance 
of  a  good  example."  In  childhood, 
one's  parents  always  seem  to  be 
pointing  to  someone  else's  be- 
havior as  superior.  And  later,  other 
people  always  seem  to  have  cleaner 
cars,  shinier  shoes,  better  gardens. 
From  the  cradle  to  the  grave,  the 
presence  of  the  good  example 
seems  inescapable. 

And  now  here  we  are  to  call 
your  attention  to  another!  If  you 
are  not  already  an  owner  of  com- 
mon stocks,  there  are  upwards  of 
15,000,000  Americans  setting  you 
a  good  example  .  .  .  15,000,000 
owners  of  shares  in  American  busi- 
ness . . .  15,000,000  risk-takers  who 
hope  to  be  profit-makers. 

Of  course,  you're  at  liberty  to 
ignore  these  good  examples  if  you 
like.  But  if  you  do,  you'll  always 
have  the  sneaking  suspicion  that 
maybe  they  have  the  right  idea  — 
that  people  who  begin  now  to  par- 
ticipate in  the  growth  of  our  econ- 
omy will  probably  enjoy  more  of 
the  fruits  of  their  investing  than 
the  late  starters  or  non-starters. 

Probably  the  best  way  to  tri- 
umph over  a  good  example  is  to 
follow  it.  In  other  words,  if  you 
can't  lick  'em,  jine  'em.  We're 
ready  to  help  whenever  you're 
ready  to  start. 


MERRILL    LYNCH, 

PIERCE, 
FENNER    &    SMITH 

INCORPORATED 

Members  New  York  Stock  Exchange 
70  PINE  STREET,  NEW  YORK  5,  N.  Y. 

LONDON 110  Fenchurch  Street 

PARIS 7  Rue  de  la  Paix 

142  offices  in  U,  S.,  Canada  and  abroad 


LETTERS 


well  are  aware  to  what  extent  events  in 
Cuba  are  distorted,  exaggerated,  and 
presented  completely  out  of  context;  and 
this  by  all  of  the  mass  media.  .  .  .  The 
instinct  for  self-preservation  is  strong, 
whether  among  Party  members  in 
Russia  or  capitalists  in  the  U.S.  The 
thinking  of  the  masses  is  manipulated 
by  the  power  elite  in  either  case. 

R.  M.  Titus 
Boston,  Mass. 

It  was  pleasing  to  read  such  a  splen- 
did piece  of  reporting  as  Priscilla  John- 
son's "Death  of  a  Writer"  [The  Mood  of 
the   Russian    People.    May].   .   .    . 

I  was  all  the  more  interested  because 
one  of  the  men  at  the  Pasternak  funeral 
— Kornei  Chukovsky— I  knew  very  well 
during  my  six  months'  stay  in  Petrograd 
in  1917-18,  when  I  was  a  member  of 
the  .\nglo-Russian  Commission.  At  that 
time  he  worked  for  better  relations  be- 
tween Bolshevik  Russia  and  the  West. 
I  note  that  Miss  Johnson  calls  him  a 
writer  for  children.  Actually,  in  the  days 
I  knew  him,  and  before,  he  was  one  of 
Russia's  best  literary  critics;  before  the 
first  world  war  he  wrote  "From  Chek- 
iiov's  Days  to  Ours."  a  very  penetrating 
piece  of  criticism  of  Russian  literature 
of  the  period.  We  may  surmise  that  he 
was  driven  into  writing  exclusively  for 
(liildrcn  by  the  Soviet  overlords  who, 
(hniiig  the  Trotskyist  purge,  at  the  in- 
stigation of  Communist  hacks,  consigned 
my  friend  Prince  D.  S.  Mirsky  ("Damn 
my  title!"  he  once  wrote  me)  to  a  Si- 
berian concentration  camp,  where  he 
was  driven  mad  and  to  death  by  his 
tormentors.  He  was  a  great  scholar,  and 
a  great  man.  Many  an  hour  my  wife 
and  I  spent  in  trying  to  dissuade  him 
from  going  back  to  Russia.  But  the  man 
was  homesick,  and  Gorky  promised  him 
inmiunity.  Miss  Johnson's  story  brought 
it  all  back  to  me.  It  deserves  many 
readers. 

John  Colrnos 
New  York,  N.  Y. 

Richard  Pipes,  in  "The  Public  Mood," 
stated,  "But  neither  is  [the  Russian] 
the  brainwashed  automaton  so  often 
pictured  by   the  outside   world." 

I  just  received  some  letters  from  a 
friend  who  recently  arrived  in  Western 
Europe  after  twelve  years  in  Russia,  the 
first  eight  in  prison.  .  .  .  My  friend 
writes  that,  except  for  a  chance  meeting 
with  a  student  she  would  never  have 
known  there  was  any  dissent  or  oppo- 
sition left  in  Russia.  She  felt  no  per- 
sonal resentment  against  her  captors 
in  spite  of  privations,  hardships,  tlireats 
while  in  prison. 

She  came  to  hate  the  Party  only  when, 
after  being  released,  she  found  a  whole 
people— her  people— reduced  to  a  state 
( losely  resembling  .soullcssness   by   need 


just  short  of  hunger,  by  the  dispropor- 
tionate importance  in  their  lives  of  each 
small  material  concession  granted  by 
their  rulers,  by  the  brainwashed  grati- 
tude they  were  taught  to  feel  for  any 
improvement  in  their  drab  and  needy 
existences,  and  by  the  threats  and 
fears  that  disbarred  any  discussion  what- 
ever of  officialdom  or  politics.  When  a 
prison  train  arrived  in  her  provincial 
town  one  day  and  the  prisoners  were 
transferred  to  trucks,  nobody  commented 
on  this  unusual  event  or  even  w-on- 
dercd  aloud  who  the  prisoners— obvi- 
ously not  common  criminals— were.  It 
was  only  after  leaving  Russia  that  my 
friend  discovered  that  the  prisoners  had 
been  professors  and  students  arrested 
for  printing  and  distributing  suppressed 
news  of  the  Hungarian  revolt.  .  .  .  Her 
impression  of  the  whole  Communist  sys- 
tem is  summed  up  in  the  expressions 
"The  Great  Brainwash,"  "The  Great 
Farce." 

Name  Withheld 

You  have  truly  outdone  yourselves 
with  this  excellent  Russian  supplement. 
Your  reporters  have  put  us  in  touch 
with  our  opposite  numbers  in  the 
U.S.S.R.  You  have  shown  us  people  like 
ourselves.  .  .  .  What  we  see  in  Russia 
today  is  the  same  totalitarian  state  that 
existed  since  the  Tartar  invasion;  eco- 
nomic systems  may  change,  but  the  peo- 
ple do  not  change,  nor  the  types  of 
rulers.  Khrushchev  is  merely  Peter  the 
Great  in  an  ill-fitting  suit. 

Lewis  Taishoff 
New  York,  N.  Y. 

Holy  Madness 

To  THE  Editors: 

It  is  hardly  likely  that  a  more  mean- 
ingful statement  than  "Apocalypse" 
[May]  has  appeared  within  memory  on 
the  pages  of  an  American  magazine. 
May  a  kinder  fate  attend  the  voice  that 
Professor  Norman  Brown  has  so  cou- 
rageously and  eloquently  raised  than 
that  of  one  crying  in  the  wilderness. 

Noel  P.  Conlon 

Chmn.,  English  Dept. 

^V^atkinson  School 

Hartford,  Conn. 

It  seems  to  me  that  instead  of  aban- 
doning reason  and  discipline  to  emotion 
and  supernatural  frenzy,  it  is  time  that 
man.  the  self-advertised  finest  handi- 
work of  God  .  .  .  began  to  use  his  gift 
of  reason  and  apply  it  to  his  prejudices, 
his  mythologies,  and  his  dogmas. 

Frankly,  I  think  this  world  needs  less 
lioly  madness— which  all  malefactors  of 
consequence  use  as  their  excuse  for  their 
actions- and  more  genuine  intelligent 
application.   For  what  Professor  Brown 


Seated,  1.  to  r.:  Bennett  Cerf,  Faith  Baldwin,  Bergen  Evans,  Bruce  Catton,  Mignon  G.  Eberhart,  John  Caples,  J.  D.  Ratcliflf 
Standing:  Mark  Wiseman,  Max  Shulman,  Rudolf  Flesch,  Red  Smith,  Rod  Serling 


Photo  by  Philippe  Halsman 


12  famous  authors  start  a 
new  kind  of  writing  school 

If  you  can  show  you  have  writing  talent  worth  developing, 

they  are  interested  in  helping  you  achieve  professional  success . . . 

right  in  your  own  home,  and  in  your  spare  time 


I 


f  you  want  to  write  professionally,  here's 
an  opportunity  never  before  available: 

These  leading  authors  and  teachers  in 
every  branch  of  writing  have  joined  to- 
gether to  create  a  school  of  professional 
writing  to  help  you  develop  your  skill, 
talent  and  craftsmanship;  and  to  pass  on 
to  you  their  secrets  of  achieving  commer- 
cial success  and  recognition. 

The  training  will  be  supervised  by 
Rod  Serling.  TV's  top  dramatist;  Bruce 
Catton.  Pulitzer  Prize  winning  author; 
Faith  Baldwin,  author  of  80  best-selling 
books  and  hundreds  of  short  stories;  Max 
Shulman.  famous  creator  of  TV  shows, 
novels  and  stories;  Bennett  Cerf.  publisher, 
editor  and  columnist;  Red  Smith,  nation- 
ally-known newspaper  columnist;  Rudolf 
Flesch,  well-known  author  and  authority 
on  business  writing;  Mignon  G.  Eberhart. 
world  famous  writer  of  mystery  novels  and 
serials;  Bergen  Evans,  university  professor 
and  co-author  of  A  Dictionary  of  Con- 
temporary Usage;  J.  D.  Ratcliff.  called 
"America's  No.  1  craftsman  in  the  field 
of  non-fiction"  by  Time  magazine;  John 
Caples,  one  of  the  nation's  great  advertis- 
ing copywriters,  and  author  of  Making  Ads 
Pay;  and  Mark  Wiseman,  noted  teacher 
of  advertising  and  author  of  The  Neu- 
Anatomy  of  Advertising. 

These  famous  authors  have  applied  to 
the  teaching  of  writing— for  the  first  time— 
a  principle  which  has  proved  itself  time 


and  again:  "If  you  want  success  for  your- 
self, learn  from  successful  people." 

Four  separate  courses 

Over  a  three-year  period  they  have  created 
four  professional  courses  in  writing  — 
Fiction  .  .  .  Non-fiction  .  .  .  Advertising  .  .  . 
and  Business  writing.  (The  first  three  con- 
tain sections  on  writing  for  television.) 
They  have  developed  a  series  of  home 
study  textbooks,  lessons  and  writing  as- 
signments that  present  —  in  a  clear  and 
stimulating  way  —  what  they  have  learned 
in  their  long,  hard  climb  to  the  top. 

The  teaching  program  created  by  these 
outstanding  authors  starts  you  with  the 
principles  and  techniques  that  underlie  all 
good  writing.  Then  you  move  on  to  the 
specialized  course  of  your  choice. 

You  are  a  class  of  one 

Every  assignment  you  mail  to  the  school 
is  carefully  read,  edited  and  corrected  by 
your  instructor  who  is,  himself,  a  profes- 
sional writer.  He  then  writes  a  lengthy 
personal  letter  of  further  analysis  and  en- 
couragement. While  he  is  appraising  your 
work  you  and  your  assignment  are  his  only 
concern.  You  are  literally  a  class  of  one. 
This  method  of  instruction  has  been 
pioneered  with  remarkable  results  in  the 
field  of  art  by  the  Famous  Artists  Schools, 
parent  organization  of  the  new  writing 


school.  During  the  past  twelve  years,  these 
schools  have  trained  thousands  for  suc- 
cessful professional  art  careers.  And  their 
teaching  methods  have  won  the  respect  and 
endorsement  of  educators  throughout  the 
world. 

As  a  student  of  the  Famous  Writers 
School,  you  will  enjoy  exactly  the  kind  of 
relationship  you  will  have  later  on  with 
editors  and  publishers.  As  Robert  Ather- 
ton,  editor  of  Cosmopolitan  magazine, 
says:  "The  concept  of  teaching  writing  by 
correspondence  is  sound,  just  as  editing  a 
magazine  by  mail  is  sound.  I  have  never 
seen  most  of  the  great  writers  who  have 
been  contributors  to  Cosmopolitan  for 
years." 

Why  not  find  out  if  you  have  the  apti- 
tude to  benefit  from  this  professional 
teaching  program? 

Send  for 

Famous  Writers  Talent  Test 

To  help  find  people  with  an  aptitude  for 
writing  that  is  worth  developing,  the  twelve 
famous  writers  have  created  a  revealing 
test  to  show  you  whether  you  should  think 
seriously  about  professional  training.  If 
you  do  have  this  aptitude,  we  will  tell  you 
so.  If  you  don't,  we  will  frankly  tell  you 
that,  too.  After  your  test  has  been  graded 
—  without  charge  by  a  professional  writer 
on  our  staff  —  it  will  be  returned  to  you. 


Famous  Writers  School 

Dept.  6077.  Westport,  Connecticut 
I  am  interested  in  finding  out  whether  I 
have  writing  talent  worth  developing. 
Please  mail  me,  without  obligation,  a  copy 
of  the  Famous  Writers  Talent  Test. 

.Mr. 

Mrs Age 

Miss 

Street 

City Zone 

County State 


NEXT  90  DAYS  CAN 
CHANGE  YOUR  LIFE 

A  Warning  from 
The  Wall  Street  Journal 

You  are  living  in  a  period  of  rapid 
changes.  The  next  90  days  will  be  filled 
with  opportunities  and  dangers. 

Fortune  will  smile  on  some  men.  Dis- 
aster will  dog  the  footsteps  of  others. 

Because  reports  in  The  Wall  Street 
Journal  come  to  you  DAILY,  you  get 
fastest  possible  warning  of  any  new  trend 
affecting  your  business  and  personal  in- 
come. You  get  facts  in  time  to  protect 
your  interests  or  seize  a  profit. 

If  you  think  The  Journal  is  just  for 
millionaires,  you  are  WRONG!  It  is  a 
wonderful  aid  to  salaried  men  making 
$7,500  to  $25,000  a  year.  It  is  valuable 
to  owners  of  small  businesses.  Read  it  90 
days  and  see  what  it  can  do  for  YOU. 

To  assure  speedy  delivery  to  you  any- 
where in  the  U.S.,  The  Journal  is  printed 
daily  in  seven  cities  from  coast  to  coast. 
It  costs  $24  a  year,  but  in  order  to  ac- 
quaint you  with  The  Journal,  we  make 
this  offer:  You  can  get  a  Trial  Subscrip- 
tion for  3  months  for  $7.  Just  send  this 
ad  with  check  for  $7.  Or  tell  us  to  bill 
you.  Address:  The  Wall  Street  Journal, 
44  Broad  Street,  New  York  4,  New  York. 

HM-7 


The  Only  Cognac  Made  and  Bottled  at  The  Chateau 
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LETTERS 


advocates  is  a  form  of  misanthropy 
much  more  virulent  than  I,  a  long-time 
practicing  misanthrope,  ever  dared 
dream  of  expounding. 

Ward  Moore 
St.  Louis,  Mo. 

Gallic  Pitchman 

To  THE  Editors: 

Long  John  Nebel's  article,  "The  Pitch- 
man" [May],  recalled  to  mind  a  thir- 
teenth-century example  of  the  same  type. 
Rutebeuf,  French  trouv^re,  in  his  Le  Diz 
de  I'Erberie  recorded  a  dramatic  mono- 
logue in  prose  and  verse  supposedly 
delivered  by  a  quack  doctor.  It  in- 
cludes many  of  the  same  elements  which 
Nebel  said  were  common  to  the  pitch- 
men of  today.  I  have  translated  [some 
of]  it  rather  freely  as  follows: 

"Good  people,  ...  I  belong  to  a 
lady  .  .  .  who  makes  a  kerchief  of  her 
ears  and  whose  eyebrows  hang  down  as 
chains  of  silver  behind  her  shoulders; 
and  know  that  she  is  the  wisest  lady  in 
all  the  four  quarters  of  the  world.  My 
lady  sends  us  out  into  many  diverse 
lands  and  diverse  countries  ...  to  kill 
wild  beasts  and  extract  ointments  from 
them  to  give  medicines  to  those  who 
are  bodily  ill.  .  .  .  [Take]  these  herbs. 
.  .  .  Steep  them  three  days  in  good  white 
wine;  if  you  have  not  white  take  red; 
if  you  have  no  red  take  brown,  and  if 
you  have  no  brown  take  fair  clear 
water.  .  .  .  Take  [them]  the  first  thing 
in  the  morning  for  thirteen  mornings; 
if  you  miss  one  take  another,  for  there 
is  no  mystery  about  them;  and  I  tell 
you  by  the  passion  of  God  that  you  will 
be  cured  from  all  disorders  and  dis- 
ease. .  .  ." 

How  the  medicine  man  of  the  thir- 
teenth century  made  his  way  to  the 
American  frontier  and  then  on  to  tele- 
vision is  difficult  to  trace,  but  I  am  sure 
there  is  some  connection.  Things  really 
haven't  changed  very  much. 

Vern  L.  Bullough 

San  Fernando  Valley  State  College 

Northridge,  Calif. 

Reviewers  Reviewed 

To  THE  Editors: 

I  must  say  I  have  lost  interest  in  your 
book  reviews  since  you  changed  your 
format.  I  do  not  refer  to  Katherine 
Gauss  Jackson's  "Books  in  Brief";  alas, 
these  well-written  capsules  are  all  I  now 
read.  I  refer  to  your  major  book-review 
section. 

When  Paul  Pickrel  wrote  the  reviews, 
I  eagerly  turned  to  the.se  pages  monthly. 
Since  your  policy  of  rambling  reviewers 
commenced,  however,  this  section  lacks 
cf)hesion,    continuity,    and    the    flavor   a 


single  personality  gave  it.  .  .  .  Please  re- 
hire Paul  or  another  full-time  reviewer 
like  him. 

Mary  J.  Hesi, 
Cincinnati,  O. 

Mr.  Pickrel  again  appears  in  his  ens- 
tomary  place  this  month,  and  under  ar- 
rangements for  an  expanded  coverage  of 
new  books,  he  and  Miss  Elizabeth  Hard- 
xvick  ivill  alternate  in  the  regular  revieio 
section  for  ten  months  of  the  year.  In  the 
other  two  months  it  will  be  given  over 
to  specialists  for  reviexv  of  the  year's 
outstanding  work  in  poetry  and  arts.  In 
addition,  special  reports  will  appear 
from  time  to  time,  outside  the  regular 
review  section,  by  experts  in  fields  of 
particular  imf)ortance— science,  econom- 
ics, history,  international  affairs,  and 
others;  each  of  these  will  undertake  an 
evaluation  of  the  most  significant  ivork 
in  his  field  during  the  previous  nine  to 
tiuelve  months. 

The  Editors 

One  Lucky  Oldster 

To  the  Editors: 

I  hope  that  none  of  our  members 
read  the  cruel  joke,  "Exigencies  of 
Eighty"  [by  Henry  H.  Saylor,  "After 
Hours,"  May].  With  incomes  under 
$2,000  a  year,  they  are  hardly  in  a  posi- 
tion to  worry  about  custom  tailors  or 
shirtmakers.  We  are  earnestly  working 
toward  the  day  when  this  will  be  a  fit 
subject  for  humor,  but  unfortunately, 
the  time  is  not  yet. 

M.  J.  Castleman 

National  Organizer 

Amer.  Federation  of  Senior  Citizens 

Chicago,  111. 

Pro  Grandpa 

Martin  Mayer's  article  "The  Good 
Slum  Schools"  [April]  quoted  R.  D. 
Morrow,  superintendent  of  the  Tucson 
public  schools,  as  referring  to  Pueblo 
Hiffh  School  as  "that  damned  school." 
The  comment  on  this  point  came  to  us 
from    his    nine-year-old    granddaughter. 

The  Editors 

I'd  like  you  to  know  my  grandpa  is 
a  fare  man.  And  another  thing  he 
doesn't  use  that  language  as  you  would 
use!  He  isn't  all  the  things  you  would 
call  him.  And  he  doesn't  use  the  nasty 
words  you  made  up.  He  never  would 
say  things  like  that  to  anyone.  Who 
ever  made  everything  up  or  if  you  made  J 
it  up  you  or  tiiey  arn't  very  nice!  I'm 
not  standing  up  for  my  grandpa  but  I 
think  you  are  rude  and  not  nice. 

Debbi  Purvis 
Tucson,  Ariz. 


ELflGfTI}^  Not  Anivar  Urbina,  small  citizen  of  Honduras.  But  the  enemy  is  there  all 
around  him —malnutrition,  disease,  the  intense  despair  of  poverty.  Anivar  and  millions  like 
him  face  the  Enemy  from  the  day  they  are  born  to  the  quick  twilight  of  their  lives.  They  need 
help  now— above  all,  help  to  help  themselves.  They  need  food,  tools,  books,  medicines  and 
technical  know-how.  By  any  standard  they  know,  we  have  these  things  in  abundance.  Whether 
it  be  in  Honduras,  Africa,  India,  or  even  in  our  own  country,  this  abundance  must  be  shared. 
If  we  Americans  help  this  child  and  others  like  him  defeat  the  Enemy,  he  will  never  forget  us; 
if  we  ignore  him,  or  try  to  bribe  him,  he  will  never  forgive  us.  Which  will  it  be? 


RS.  Employees  and  agents  of  Nationwide  voluntarily  have  been 
sponsoring  special  self-help  programs  in  four  Central  American 
countries  in  cooperation  with  CARE.  More  than  $150,000  has 
been  raised  in  the  last  18  months  to  provide  the  people  of  these 
countries  with  the  tools  for  better  education,  medical  care, 
agriculture,  housing  and  other  basic  needs. 

Nationwide  Mutual  Ins.  Co.,  Nationwide  Life  Ins.  Co.,  Nationwide  Mutual  Fire  Ins.  Co.,  home  office:  Columbus  16,  0. 


America's  most  progressive  insurance  organization 

ATIOKWIDE 


JOHN    FISCHER 


the  editor^s 

EASY  CHAIR 


Point   of  No   Return? 

...  A  Puzzled  Report 

from  Yugoslavia 

THIS  spring  a  foundation  asked  me  to  go 
to  Yugoslavia  to  help  pick  about  twenty 
people— lawyers,  writers,  scholars,  government  of- 
ficials—to study  in  the  United  States  on  fellow- 
shijis.  I  jimiped  at  the  chance,  l^ecause  I  was 
eager  to  learn  something  about  a  country  that 
had  long  [)u//led  me,  imder  circumstances  more 
intimate  than  I  could  hoj:)e  for  as  a  tourist  or 
visiting  reporter. 

Three  weeks  and  a  hundred  interviews  later, 
it  still  puzzles  me.  I  came  back  feeling  a  little 
like  the  Oklahoma  farm  boy  who  had  just  seen 
his  first  giraffe:  There  ain't  no  such  animal. 

Never  before  have  1  encountered  any  place  so 
beset  with  contradictions  and  bewilderments.  Al- 
though I  thought  I  had  done  my  homework 
pretty  carefully,  I  began  to  rim  into  surprises  the 
minute  I  landed  at  Zagreb  airport,  and  they  kept 
piling  up  day  after  day.  It  is  hard  to  understand 
how  such  a  mixed-up  society  can  work.  Yet  it 
obviously  does  work— apparently  a  good  deal  bet- 
ter than  I  had  been  led  to  expect.  In  the  end  I 
began  to  wonder  whether  this,  rather  than  either 
America  or  Russia,  might  not  prove  to  be  the 
Wave  of  the  Future  for  many  undeveloped  coiui- 
tries  in  Africa,  Asia,  and  Latin  America. 

To  this  question,  or  hunch,  I  can't  give  a  con- 
fident answer,  any  more  than  I  can  explain  the 
paradoxes  which  kept  leaping  up  at  every  street 
corner.    For  example: 

1.  The  Yugoslavs  insist  they  are  Communists 
—indeed,  the  only  genuine,  pure-strain  Com- 
munists anywhere.  Yet  they  distrust  and  dislike 
the  Russians  more  than  anybody,  except  Ger- 
mans. And  creeping  capitalism— complete  with 
private  [jrrjfits,  competition,  free  markets,  and  a 


good  deal  of  rugged  individual  enterprise— is  eat- 
ing deep  into  what  was,  only  ten  years  ago,  a 
rigidly  socialist  (and  almost  moribund)  economy. 

2.  The  official  faith  is  atheism.  Nevertheless 
the  government  subsidizes  theological  seminaries 
for  the  training  of  Catholic,  Greek  Orthodox, 
and  Moslem  clergymen.  (Mohammedanism  is 
the  fastest-growing  religion,  Avith  evangelical 
Protestant  sects  running  a  poor  second.  Nobody 
could  tell  me  why.)  In  Sarajevo  alone,  sixty- 
seven  mosques  are  open  for  business— each  with 
a  minaret  that  looks  imcannily  like  an  Atlas 
missile.  And  in  Belgrade  one  of  the  tallest  build- 
ings now  going  up  is  a  Seventh  Day  Adventist 
church,  financed  largely  by  contributions  from 
America.  Although  the  Vatican  has  been  de- 
nouncing the  Yugoslav  regime  bitterly,  ever  since 
the  end  of  World  War  II,  most  of  the  nurses  in 
the  biggest  military  hospital  are  nuns;  and  in 
the  streets  of  one  town— Dubrovnik— I  counted 
nuns  in  the  costumes  of  five  different  religious 
orders,  plus  three  varieties  of  monks.  Easter  Eve 
services  were  well  attended,  by  young  people  as 
well  as  old. 

3.  The  Iron  Curtain  hangs  on  only  one  side 
of  the  country,  and  not  the  side  you  might  think. 
Wherever  Yugoslavia  touches  one  of  the  Soviet 
satellites,  the  frontier  is  closely  guarded  and 
traffic  is  sparse.  (The  border  Avith  Albania,  that 
forlorn  little  satellite  of  Red  China,  is  practically 
in  a  state  of  siege.)  To  the  West,  however,  you 
will  see  no  barbed  wire,  no  mine  fields,  no  watch- 
towers  bristling  with  machine  guns.  Even  the 
customs  service  is  a  good  deal  more  perfunctory 
than  it  is  in,  say,  New  York.  People  wander  back 
and  forth  into  Italy,  Austria,  and  Greece  about 
as  freely  as  Americans  cross  into  Canada  or 
Mexico.  Thousands  of  Yugoslavs  spend  their 
vacations  in  Venice  and  Vienna,  and— a  more 
telling  fact— practically  all  of  them  return  home. 
Although  East  Germans  are  fleeing  to  the  West 
at  the  rate  of  about  200,000  a  year,  Yugoslav 
political  defectors  are  now  almost  unheard  of. 

J.  Like  all  Communist  countries,  this  one  is 
run  by  a  small,  jjrivileged,  disciplined  elite:  The 
Party.  But  the  Parly  members  1  met  were 
markedly  different  in  personality  from  those  I 
have  known  in  Russia,  Germany,  England,  and 
the  United  States.  Not  one  had  that  harsh, 
humorless,  obsessive  quality— the  preoccupation 
with  power  to  the  exclusion  of  everything  else— 
which  the  typical  Communist  wears  like  a  kind 
of  psychic  epaulette.  These  strike  you,  not  as 
steel  cogs  in  a  political  api)aratus,  but  as  warm- 
blooded human  beings;  and  some  are  truly 
civilized,  to  a  degree  unknown  in  Russia  and 
rare  among  politicians  anywhere. 

For  instance,  when  I  was  asked  to  dinner  with 
Mrs.  Jose  Vilfan— described  as  "a  leading  theo- 
retician and  Party  organizer  of  Slovenia"— I  ex- 
pected a  dowdy  old  battle-axe  of  the  y\nna 
Pauker  type;   she   turned   out   to  be  one  of  the 


11 


most  sophisticated  and  charming  women  I  ever 
met.  The  Foreign  Minister,  Koca  Popovic,  is  a 
surrealist  poet,  a  philosopher,  the  son  of  a  mil- 
lionaire, a  scintillating  conversationalist— and, 
incidentally,  a  brave  and  skillful  leader  of  guer- 
rilla troops.  One  fairly  typical  young  bureaucrat, 
whom  I  got  to  know  quite  well,  has  applied  for 
Party  membership  for  the  same  reasons  that  make 
a  junior  business  executive  in  New  York  auto- 
matically a  Republican:  it's  the  respectable  thing 
to  do,  and  a  help  to  his  career.  He  is,  however, 
a  good  deal  more  knowledgeable  about  jazz 
records,  smart  tailoring,  and  his  Mercedes  car 
than  about  the  works  of  Marx  and  Lenin;  his 
grandfather  was  a  baron,  and  he  proudly  traces 
his  ancestry  back  to  the  twelfth  century. 
This  is  the  dictatorship  of  the  proletariat? 

I  N  spite  of  such  oddities— and  the  list  could  run 
on  for  pages— it  does  seem  possible  to  draw  a  few 
tentative  conclusions  about  this  curious  land. 

For  one  thing,  Yugoslavia  apparently  is  now 
reaching  a  Point  of  No  Return.  More  precisely, 
it  is  passing  three  of  history's  milestones  simul- 
taneously; in  all  likelihood  it  can  never  turn 
back  from  any  of  them;  and  each  of  the  three 
promises  to  alter  permanently  the  character  of 
its  society. 

Milestone  One:  To  the  astonishment  of  the 
Yugoslavs  themselves,  they  evidently  are  about  to 
jell  into  a  real  nation. 

A  generation  ago,  this  looked  most  improbable. 
Yugoslavia  is,  of  course,  a  synthetic  state— a 
figment  of  Woodrow  Wilson's  imagination, 
pieced  together  in  1918  out  of  the  broken  scraps 
of  the  Turkish  and  Austro-Hungarian  empires. 
It  always  seemed  on  the  verge  of  disintegration, 
and  when  Hitler  struck  on  April  6,  1941,  it  did 
fall  apart  in  a  matter  of  hours.  (Two  years  later 
there  were  nine  different  "armies"  in  the  coun- 
try, some  fighting  the  Nazis,  some  the  Allies,  but 
mostly  fighting  each  other  in  a  civil  war  of 
maniac  complexity.) 

A  local  proverb  describes  Yugoslavia  as  "a 
land  with  five  nationalities,  four  languages,  three 
religions,  two  alphabets,  and  one  boss."  The 
main  reason  why  Tito  remains  the  boss  is  that  he 
is  teaching  a  lot  of  people  to  feel— for  the  first 
time— that  they  are  Yugoslavs,  instead  of  Serbs, 
Croats,  Bosnians,  Macedonians,  or  Slovenes. 

They  still  loathe  each  other,  naturally.  A 
Croat,  who  inherited  Western  culture  by  way  of 
Austria,  is  likely  to  look  with  contempt  on  the 
yokels  of  the  eastern  provinces,  who  stagnated 
for  five  hundred  years  under  Turkish  rule.  A 
Montenegrin  mountaineer— who  may  own  noth- 
ing but  his  dagger,  an  ancient  rifle,  and  the  rags 
on  his  back— will  scorn  all  strangers,  including 
the  tribe  in  the  next  valley.  (Chances  are  they 
have  been  enjoying  a  blood  feud  for  ten  genera- 
tions.)   The  Serbs  remember  indelibly  that  dur- 


ing the  war  a  bunch  of  Croat  Quislings— the 
Ustacha— tried  to  convert  the  Greek  Orthodox 
peasantry  to  Catholicism  by  force,  butchering 
some  120,000  men,  women,  and  children  in  the 
process.  So  too  with  the  Shiptars,  the  Ruthenians, 
and  all  the  other  racial  and  religious  tag-ends  of 
Balkan  history:  each  has  a  sound  reason,  stretch- 
ing far  into  the  blood-soaked  past,  for  hating  his 
neighbors. 

If  Tito  has  managed  to  weld  these  unlikely 
fragments  into  what  now  looks  like  a  durable 
state,  he  owes  some  thanks  to  a  pair  of  borrowed 
tools— one  American,  the  other  Russian. 

From  us  he  took  the  idea  of  federalism,  a 
radical  notion  in  the  Balkans.  Before  the  war, 
the  kings  of  the  Black  George  Dynasty  had  tried 
to  hold  the  country  together  by  a  tightly  cen- 
tralized government,  run  strictly  by  Serbs— with 
the  result  that  everybody  else  hated  the  Serbs 
more  than  ever.  Tito  (a  Croat)  avoided  this  sort 
of  thing  by  giving  each  of  the  main  nationali- 
ties its  own  semi-autonomous  People's  Republic, 
staffed  with  local  talent.  The  upshot  is  that 
State  Rights  is  as  popular  a  doctrine  in  Yugo- 
slavia as  it  is  in  Texas. 

From  the  Russians  he  learned  to  build  a  Party 
which  would  serve  as  an  instrument  of  personal 
power,  the  most  efficient  and  ruthless  one  seen 
in  these  parts  since  the  Sultan's  Janissaries.  To- 
day it  is  a  lot  less  heavy-handed  than  it  used  to 
be,  when  Tito  was  exterminating  his  rivals  and 
fighting  a  battle  for  survival  with  Stalin.  In  some 
ways,  to  be  noted  later,  it  behaves  quite  differ- 
ently from  any  other  Communist  party  in  the 
world. 

Yet  it  remains,  in  Beatrice  Webb's  phrase,  "the 
steel  framework  of  the  society,"  the  main  force 
making  for  unity  and  stability.  It  looks  solid.  Its 
top  people  are  bound  together,  not  only  by 
loyalty  to  Tito,  but  also  by  a  strong  chain  of 
loyalty  to  each  other,  forged  "in  the  woods"  (as 
they  like  to  put  it)  during  their  three  and  a  half 
years  of  desperate  guerrilla  warfare.  They  really 
are  comrades,  in  a  sense  much  deeper  than  the 
Communist  meaning  of  that  term.  So  when  Tito 
dies— he  is  now  sixty-nine— there  is  every  expecta- 
tion that  the  levers  of  power  will  pass  smoothly 
into  the  hands  of  his  heir  apparent,  Edvard 
Kardelj.  Barring  a  major  war,  then,  it  seems 
likely  that  the  Yugoslav  nation  is  finally  here  to 
stay.  We  might  as  well  get  used  to  it,  and  its 
peculiar  ways. 

Milestone  Two:  Apparently  Yugoslavia  is  pass- 
ing what  Walt  W.  Rostow  calls  "the  economic 
take-off  point."  Its  production  is  at  last  going 
up  at  a  faster  rate  than  its  population.  Con- 
sequently it  can  now  build  up  its  own  capital 
without  further  outside  help— thus  transforming 
itself,  under  its  own  steam,  from  an  underde- 
veloped to  a  modern  industrial  society. 

Indeed  Yugoslavia's  economy  is  now  growing 


12 


THE     EDITOR'S     EASY      CHAIR 


faster  than  either  America's  or  Rus- 
sia's. After  careful  study  of  all  the 
figures  (^vhich  are  far  more  detailed, 
complete,  and  believable  here  than 
in  the  Soviet  countries),  oiu"  Embassy 
economists  have  concluded  that  the 
true  rate  of  growth  in  Gross  National 
Product  is  about  10  per  cent  a  year- 
one  of  the  highest  in  the  workl. 

In  part,  this  is  due  to  American 
help— though  you  \\ould  never  guess 
it  from  reading  the  Yugoslav  neA\s- 
papers.  (The  press  is  consistently 
hostile.*  It  rareh  mentions  I'niied 
States  aid,  to  Yugoslavia  or  anvbody 
else,  nor  does  it  like  to  admit  that 
our  government  can  ever  act  with 
decency  or  ^visdora.  Nevertheless, 
nearly  all  the  Yugoslavs  I  met  Avere 
fully  a^vare  of  American  aid  and 
grateful  for  it.  Moreover,  they  are 
notably  cordial  to  individual  Ameri- 
cans—more so,  for  example,  than  tlie 
French  or  Austrians.) 

*  One  explanation  is  sheer  nation- 
alism. These  arc  proud  and  touchy 
people,  who  hate  to  concede  that  thcv 
ever  needed  anybody's  help.  Another 
is  their  need  to  prove,  to  themselves  and 
to  the  outside  world,  that  thev  are  still 
"good  Communists."  no  matter  what  the 
Kremlin  says.  So  the  further  they  mtne 
awav  from  orthodox  Marxism  in  their 
domestic  affairs,  the  louder  thev  are 
likely  to  scream  at  the  capitalist  coim- 
tries.  They  are  almost  comicallv  afraid 
of  being  called  "lackeys  of  Wall  Street." 

Perhaps  for  the  same  reason.  Jugo- 
slavia nearly  always  sides  with  Russia 
on  international  issues— even  Avhen  this 
is  against  its  own  interest.  For  instance, 
Yugoslavia,  like  all  of  the  small  coun- 
tries, has  a  strong  interest  in  preserving 
the  vigor  and  independence  of  the 
United  Nations.  Yet  it  tamely  echoes 
Khrushchev's  attacks  on  Hammarskjold 
and  the  UN  Secretariat. 

A  third  explanation  is  plain  fright. 
The  Yugoslavs  know  they  have  nf)thing 
to  fear  from  us;  but  the  Russian  army  is 
just  over  the  border,  and  the  example 
of  Hungary  is  still  fresh.  Naturally  they 
try  hard  never  to  speak  a  provocative 
word  to  the  Russians,  nor  a  polite  word 
to  Russia's  enemies. 

And  beneath  all  this  lie  the  inherent 
contradictions  in  the  Yugoslavs'  position. 
They  are  trying  to  be  both  neutralist  and 
Communist  at  the  same  time:  to  get  all 
the  help  they  can  from  the  West,  to 
placate  the  East,  and  also  to  set  them- 
sclvt  s  up  as  leaders  of  a  bloc  of  uncom- 
mitted nations  in  .Africa.  Asia,  and 
eventually  Latin  America.  Inevitably, 
their  behavior  is  often  devious  and 
dfuible-faccd— in  a  word,  Balkan. 


It  may  be  some  small  comfort  to 
note  that  here,  at  least,  our  foreign 
economic  policy  has  worked  well- 
however  badh  it  may  have  gone  in 
Laos,  the  Middle  East,  or  parts  of 
Latin  America.  The  amount  of  aid 
was  relatively  modest;  much  of  it  was 
surplus  food.  It  was  used  efficiently, 
Avith  negligible  Avaste  or  graft.  And 
it  achieved  its  objective:  to  help 
Yugoslavia  survive  as  an  independent 
nation.  Simply  by  demonstrating 
tiiat  it  is  possible  for  a  one-time 
satellite  to  break  aA\a\  from  the 
Soviet  grasp,  and  then  to  defy  all  the 
Kremlin's  efforts  to  crush  it  by  stib- 
version  and  blockade,  the  Yugoslavs 
jDcrlormed  a  major  service  for  the 
catise  of  freedom.  At  the  same  time 
they  did  great  damage  to  the  myth  of 
monolithic,  infallible  Soviet  leader- 
ship. \\'hat  better  rettirn  on  oin  in- 
vestment could  we  ask? 

But  we  don't  need  to  invest  any 
more  money  here— or,  at  least,  not 
much.  Because  of  its  ctirrent  drought, 
Yugoslavia  may  need  some  of  our 
surplus  Avheat  this  fall.  Aside  from 
tliat,  IioAvever,  it  is  noAV  quite  capable 
of  plugging  ahead  on  its  oAvn.  In- 
deed, we  might  do  Avell  to  hint,  tact- 
fiUIy  but  firmly,  that  the  Ytigoslavs 
should  begin  tcj  contribute  some- 
thing to  undeveloped  countries  else- 
Avhere.  If  they  aspire  to  lead  these 
countries— and  that  now  seems  to  be 
Tito's  chief  ambition— they  had  bet- 
ter start  paying  the  price  of  leader- 
ship. 

T  H  E  J'  can  well  afford  it.  The  surge 
of  economic  groAsth  is  obvious  to  any 
traveler.  (Soinetimes  painfully  so, 
because  new  apartmenis,  factories, 
and  office  buildings  are  going  up 
everywhere,  and  the  Yugoslav  A\ork- 
ing  day  starts  at  7:00  a.m.;  bull- 
dozers and  air  hammers  are  sure  to 
wake  you  up  at  that  hour,  no  matter 
how  late  you  went  to  bed.) 

Housing  is  still  short— after  all,  the 
country  lost  a  third  of  all  its  build- 
ings during  the  war— but  most  other 
goods  are  becoming  fairly  abundant. 
The  supermarkets,  faithfully  copied 
from  the  .\merican  inodel,  are 
stacked  high  with  groceries,  dry 
gcjods,  detergents,  and  such  minor 
luxuries  as  Israeli  oranges  and  a  soft 
drink  known  as  Jugocoke.  I  saw  no 
one  who  looked  underfed;  on  the 
contrary  man)  Yugoslaxs  (who  are 
notoriously    fond    of    starches    and 


fancy  pastry)  look  as  if  they  might 
well  spare  a  few  pounds.  In  the  main 
cities,  the  women  dress  at  least  as 
smartly  as  their  counterparts  in,  say, 
X'ienna  or  Munich,  and  at  the  Zagreb 
opera  one  can  see  nearly  as  many  fur 
stoles  as  at  the  Met.  (No  minks,  my 
companion  informed  me,  but  to  a 
male  eye  they  looked  attractive 
enough;  so  did  their  contents.) 

The  Yugoslavs  are  just  as  auto- 
cra/y  as  Americans,  and  a  surprising 
nimiber  liave  somehow  managed  to 
get  hold  of  foreign  cars.  Alihougli 
they  need  other  things— including 
roads— a  lot  more  ingently,  they  are 
doubling  their  own  attto  production 
e\er\  year.  In  1961  they  expect  to 
turn  out  32,000  Fiats  and  Citroens, 
btiilt  under  licensing  agreements 
with  the  Italians  and  French. 

A  L  L  this  does  not  mean  that  the 
country  is  swimining  in  fat.  The  old 
Turkish  provinces  are  still,  in  fact, 
about  the  most  backward  areas  of 
Europe.  .\  Macedonian  friend  told 
me  that  his  home  town,  Skoplje,  is 
the  biggest  city  in  Europe  without 
a  sewer  system;  and  in  Bosnia  and 
Montenegro  it  is  an  exceptional 
family  that  can  afford  meat  oftener 
than  once  a  week.  Nevertheless 
everybody  I  talked  to  (including  the 
anti-Communists  and  the  grtmiblers) 
agreed  that  things  are  a  lot  better 
than  they  were  five  years  ago,  and 
that  the  rate  of  gain  in  living  stand- 
ards is  picking  up  fast. 

For  this  prosperity,  most  of  the 
credit  mtist  go  to  the  ordinary  Yugo- 
slav citizens— however  useful  our  aid 
may  have  been  as  a  starter.  They  are 
a  remarkably  hard-A\orking  lot,  and 
they  look  it.  In  partictdar  the  men 
and  Avomen  over  forty,  who  carried 
the  greatest  strain  of  the  war  and 
reconstruction,  often  appear  ten 
years  older  than  their  true  age.  Per- 
haps one  of  the  biggest  contributions 
they  can  make  to  the  Africans  and 
Latin  .Americans  is  to  persuade  them 
that  there  is  a  certain  relationshij:) 
between  hard  work  and  well-being— 
an  idea  that  we  have  not  been  able, 
so  far,  to  get  across  with  notable 
success. 

Part  of  the  credit,  too,  belongs  to 
the  country's  break  with  the  old- 
fashioned,  Soviet-type  economic  the- 
ory. Ordy  after  tlie  Yugoslavs  sliook 
loose  from  Russia  in  1918  did  they 
begin     to     exj)criment     with     their 


THE     EASY     CHAIR 

unique  variety  of  a  mixed  economy- 
combining  some  elements  of  social- 
ism and  some  of  individual  enter- 
prise in  a  highly  flexible  and 
pragmatic  mixture.  They  are  experi- 
menting still.  Hardly  a  week  goes  by 
without  a  change  in  the  economic 
ground  rules— and  all  the  recent 
shifts  have  been  in  the  direction  of 
further  decentralization,  more  local 
control,  greater  personal  respon- 
sibility.* So  far  the  experiment  has 
paid  off  handsomely. 

Milestone  Three:  This  is  the  most 
important  of  all,  and  the  hardest  to 
be  sure  about.  My  guess  might  turn 
out  to  be  all  wrong.  But  for  what  it 
is  worth,  I  am  convinced  that  Tito 
has  now  carried  his  people  so  far 
away  from  the  So\iet  camp  that  he 
could  not  turn  back  even  if  he 
wanted  to— which  he  plainly  does 
not. 

Even  after  his  death,  ii  seems  to 
me,  there  is  almost  no  likelihood  that 
Yugoslavia  will  again  become  a  Rus- 
sian satellite. 

Both  its  economic  antl  its  political 
systems  are  now  Avell  along  in  a  proc- 
ess of  change  which  seems  to  be  ir- 
reversible. Neither  is  apt  to  become 
identical  with  our  kind  of  mixed 
economy  or  our  brand  of  two-party 
democracy.  Yet  they  are  already 
closer  in  many  ways  to  American 
specifications  than  to  the  Russian; 
and  it  is  quite  possible  that  the 
Yugoslav  experience  m:'y  prove  more 
relevant  to  other  small,  undeveloped 
countries  with  no  tradition  of  self- 
government  than  our  own  experience 
—which  is,  after  all,  unique  and  per- 
haps impossible  to  duplicate. 

The  evidence  for  these  conclusions, 
tentative  as  they  are,  will  be  exam- 
ined in  another  report  in  this  space 
next  month. 

*  One  government  official  who  is 
pretty  high  up  in  the  Party  hierarchy 
cold  me,  somewhat  apprehensively,  that 
he  thought  they  were  moAing  too  far 
and  too  fast.  "We  are  going  to  have  to 
take  a  step  backward  before  long."  he 
said,  "or  the  system  will  get  entirely 
out  of  control."  There  is  some  evidence 
that  many  of  the  older  Communists,  who 
got  their  training  in  the  Stalinist  era, 
have  similar  forebodings.  Perhaps  with 
reason.  I  don't  see  how  economic  de- 
centralization can  go  much  lurthcr  with- 
out political  decentralization  av  well— 
and  that  would  inevitably  mean  some 
loosening  of  the  Party's  grip. 


ANNOUNCING 

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on  an  overlooked  industry  group  where 

new  developments  have  stimulated 

EXPLOSIVE  GROWTH 

and  in  which  we  expect  the 

STOCKS'  EARNINGS 
TO  DOUBLE  &  TREBLE 

The  stocks  herein  brought  to  light  are  low-priced, 

now  selling  under  $5  or  $10,  and  they  are  undervalued 

in  relation  to  the  earning  power  about  to  develop. 

"Explosive  growth"  is  a  phrase  not  often  used  by  the  Value  Line  organiza- 
tion. Nor  is  it  ever  used  loosely. 

For  this  overlooked  industry-group  —  whose  gross  revenues  are  doubling 
every  4  or  5  years,  the  phrase  "explosive  growth"  exactly  describes  the  facts. 

Until  now,  however,  certain  government  policies  just  recently  changed,  have 
had  a  devastating  effect  on  net  profits  for  companies  in  this  industry.  Until 
now  —  and  not  surprisingly  —  the  investment  community  has  therefore  virtu- 
ally ignored  this  group  despite  its  foreseeable  key  role  in  one  of  the  nation's 
major  industries. 

But  as  the  investment  meaning  of  new  developments  becomes  increasingly 
clear,  we  expect  that  public  interest  in  these  stocks  will  increase  widely. 

Should  you  decide  to  act  upon  Value  Line's  specific  recommendations  now, 
we  suggest  you  consider  a  "package"  of  these  stocks  rather  than  any  one  of 
them.  (Because  most  of  these  issues  are  low-priced,  it  is  possible  to  purchase 
several  of  them  —  thus  achieving  the  benefits  of  diversification  —  without  an 
unduly  large  total  investment.) 

No  stock  can  ever  be  free  of  some  risk.  But  it  can  be  said  of  these  stocks  that 
their  prospective  rewards  far  outweigh  any  risks  that  can  be  visualized. 

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AFTER   HOURS 


,*-^-^-7^/^<j,<:fT9^«S>fc<e»ia _^ 


MY    INVASION    OF    MARSEILLES 

by  Joshua  Logan 


Joshua  Lopan  was  co-author,  direc- 
tor, and  producer  of  "South  Pacific," 
for  which  he  ivon  the  Pulitzer  Prize 
in  19S0.  The  plays  and  movies  tvhich 
he  has  written,  produced,  or  directed 
range  from  "On  Borroived  Time^'  to 
"Mister  Roberts"  and  "Sayonara." 

FOOLS    rush    in   where   angels 
fear    to    tread,    and    American 
movies  are  here  to  prove  it. 

Recently  I  led  an  American  inva- 
sion of  Marseilles,  the  largest  city  of 
Provence.  It  was  my  pleasant  duty 
to  make  the  motion  j^iclurc  Faitny, 
which  is  a  combination  of  the  three 
stories  Marcel  Pagnol  wrote  in  the 
late  'twenties  and  early  'thirties 
called  Tlie  Marseilles  Trilogy,  con- 
sisting of  the  plays  and  movies, 
Marius,  Fanny,  and  Cesar.  The 
trilogy  is  a  modern  French  classic 
w'ixh  a  pecidiar  flavor  of  its  own. 
Scenes  from  it  arc  reprinted  in 
French  schoolbooks.  Phonograph 
records  of  the  original  sound  track 
spoken  by  the  great  French  actor 
Raimu,  with  Pierre  Fresnay  and 
Charpin,  are  collectors'  items.  The 
"game  of  cards"  is  remembered  by 
most  Frenchmen  as  the  funniest 
scene  in  modern  French  literature. 
Plaster  statuettes  of  the  game  of 
cards  are  sold  as  souvenirs  all  over 
France. 


It  is  said  that  Marcel  Pagnol  has 
been  collecting  an  enormous  yearly 
income  from  the  replaying  of  the 
three  French  films.  Surely  it  was 
because  of  this  work  that  he  ^vas 
made  a  member  of  the  Academie 
Frangaise  and  allowed  to  wear  its 
embroidered  uniform  and  sport  its 
bejeweled  sword. 

But  to  the  French  it  is  not  Pagnol's 
property;  it  belongs  to  them.  All 
France  seemed  to  bristle  when  I  ar- 
rived with  my  associates  to  start 
choosing  locations  in  Marseilles.  The 
French  newspapers  dealt  with  the 
subject  in  heavy  sarcasm.  "This 
giant  Texan"— I  am  rather  large  and 
I  was  born  in  Texas— "dreams  to 
make  an  American  picture  out  of 
Fanny!  It  can't  be  done!  It's  ridicu- 
lous, impossible,  and  typically 
American  to  think  that  it  can!  And 
even  if  it  is  good,  we  won't  like  it!" 

The  only  one  who  dared  to  dis- 
agree with  the  newspapers  was  M. 
Pagnol  himself,  who  had  been  my 
friend  for  several  years.  I  had  di- 
rected the  American  musical  comedy 
based  on  the  trilogy  in   1954. 

"You  will  make  a  great  picture, 
Josuah,"  he  said  to  me,  pronouncing 
my  name  very  much  as  the  French 
spell  it— with  the  "h"  at  the  end. 
"Of  course,  my  esteemed  country 
men  say  that  I  have  traded  my  soul 
for  money  and  that  this  project 
proves  I  will  do  anything  for  that 


miserable  commodity,  but  I  really 
believe  that  the  picture  will  be  great. 
It  doesn't  have  to  be  played  by 
Raimu.  Raimu  was  a  monster." 
(Monster,  in  modern  French,  is  a 
very  handy  expression  meaning 
either  prodigy  or  devil.) 

The  fact  that  I  had  persuaded 
France's  two  most  famous  exports, 
Maurice  Chevalier  and  Charles 
Boyer,  to  j)lay  the  leading  roles  of 
Panisse  and  Cesar,  seemed  to  im- 
press nobody  in  France.  Pagnol  says 
that  any  Frenchman  who  makes  a 
success  outside  of  France  is  without 
honor  to  the  French.  "We  are  the 
greatest  snobs  in  the  world,"  he  says 
with  a  combination  of  sneering  dis- 
taste and  twinkling  pride.  "Don't 
let  them  frighten  you.  Go  right 
ahead  and  make  a  great  picture.  I 
will  enjoy  being  famous  in  the  out- 
side  world." 

I  rented  an  office  in  Paris  in  the 
Studios  de  Boulogne  and  started 
casting.  I  still  had  to  find  a  young 
French  girl  to  play  Fanny.  Leslie 
Caron  had  refused  because  she  also 
didn't  believe  any  foreigner  could 
make  an  American  version  of  these 
French  masterpieces. 

This  was  not  my  first  wrestling 
match  with  the  problems  of  Fanny. 
When  S.  N.  Behrman  and  I  tried  to 
translate  the  three  plays  into  ac- 
ceptable English  for  the  musical 
comedy  which  we  did  together,  with 
Harold  Rome's  music  and  lyrics,  at 
first  Pagnol's  Marseilles  phrases 
seemed  to  defy  translation.  Even 
though  the  trilogy  is  a  sweetly  sad 
and  rueful  story,  it  is  told  in  broad 
comic  terms.  The  Marseillais  are 
cavalier  boasters;  they  talk  and  ges- 
ture with  bravura.  Alphonse  Daudet 
in  Tartarin  de  Tarascon  blames  it 
on  the  sun.  He  says  the  sun  is  so 
hot  when  it  glares  down  on  the  Midi 
that  it  acts  as  a  magnifying  glass 
and  tends  to  enlarge  everything— 
gestures,  voices,  even  the  content  of 
what  people  say.  It's  not  lies  the 
peojile  of  Provence  tell— merely 
elephantine  truths. 

Behrman  and  I  had  to  conjure  up 
English  that  would  taste  as  salty  as 
Pagnol's  French  and  yet  dodge  every 
hint  of  English  or  American  slang.I 
Harold  Rome  had  the  same  problem; 
he  could  only  write  lyrics  that  used 
a  kind  of  classic,  timeless  English. 

In  our  version  we  kept  the  char- 
acter of  Panisse  alive  until  the  cur 
tain  was  coming  down  at  the  end  ol 


the  play;  in  Pagnol's  trilogy  Panisse 
died  at  the  very  beginning  of  the  last 
third  of  the  story,  leaving  little  sus- 
pense. Pagnol,  upon  reading  our 
version  of  the  play,  wrote  me  a  letter 
saying,  "At  last  you  have  found  an 
ending  for  me." 

In  preparing  for  the  motion  pic- 
ture, Julius  Epstein  was  engaged  to 
rewrite  our  version  and  make  it  into 
a  scenario.  After  many  meetings 
with  him  and  executives  of  Warner 
Brothers,  we  decided  to  do  a  non- 
musical  version  of  Fanny,  using 
Harold  Rome's  warm  score  to  under- 
line the  moods  of  the  picture  but 
avoiding  all  songs.  It  was  mostly  a 
question  of  length.  Songs  take  time, 
and  we  wanted  to  tell  more  of  Pag- 
nol's story.  Also,  the  French  do  not 
like  the  American  musical  form  in 
pictures;  neither  do  the  Germans, 
Italians,  or  Swiss.  Without  the 
European  market  everyone  felt  it 
would  be  too  great  a  risk. 

Julius  Epstein  watched  the  three 
pictures  again,  using  their  sound 
tracks  and  our  libretto  as  his 
main  sources.  He  then  proceeded  to 
add  scenes  that  had  had  to  be  elimi- 
nated from  the  musical  version. 

I  passed  out  copies  of  the  script  to 
all  my  French  associates,  who  were 
bilingual.  There  was  imiformity  in 
the  reaction  to  it.  Each  looked  up 
after  having  read  the  last  lines  of 
the  script  and,  with  enormously 
surprised  eyes,  said,  "Why,  it's 
good!" 

My  two  biggest  problems  at  that 
time  were  to  get  a  girl  to  play  Fanny, 
and  secure  a  square-rigged  sailing 
ship  which  represented  the  femme 
fatale  of  the  piece.  This  ship  was  to 
lure  the  young  boy,  Marius,  away 
from  Fanny's  arms.  The  time  for 
shooting  was  getting  closer.  Michel 
Romanoff,  my  assistant,  took  off  in 
an  airplane  to  scout  all  the  ports 
in  the  Mediterranean  for  a  square- 
rigged  ship.  I  flew  to  England  to 
try  and  persuade  Leslie  Caron  to 
change  her  mind.  She  finally  capitu- 
lated when  she  realized  that  Chajles 
Boyer,  whom  she  had  long  admired 
and  who  was  as  French  as  she  was, 
had  agreed  to  play  the  part  of  Cesar 
which  Raimu  had  created.  It  was 
not  because  of  me  but  the  thought  of 
playing  with  Chevalier,  Boyer,  and 
Horst  Buchholz  that  finally  captured 
her. 

Time  was  getting  short.  Dresses 
and  hair  pieces  were  being  made  in 


England  for  Leslie.  The  huge  sets 
were  beginning  to  be  constructed.  A 
crew  of  workmen  took  off  by  train 
and  car  to  start  building  the  scaf- 
folding on  the  Old  Port  in  Mar- 
seilles. The  sets  ^vere  to  represent  the 
weather-beaten  buildings  which  had 
been  torn  down  during  the  war  on 
the  right  side  of  the  port;  and  they 
were  to  camouflage  the  new  concrete 
structures  there.  The  left  side  of  the 
port,  capped  by  Notre  Dame  de  la 
Garde,  was  still  almost  intact. 

M  Y  little  office  at  Boulogne  was  like 
a  small  lifeboat.  In  every  corner  of 
the  room  were  French  actors  prac- 
ticing English  so  that  I  could  decide 
it  they  could  play  in  the  picture  and 
still  be  understood. 

A  telephone  call  came  from  Palma 
de  Mallorca  from  Michel  Romanoft. 
He  had  found  the  perfect  ship!  She 
was  the  Verona,  an  English  barken- 
tine  built  many  years  ago  by  Mr. 
Singer,  owner  of  the  Singer  Sewing 
Machine  Comjiany.  Recently  she 
had  been  re-rigged  with  square  fore- 
sails to  be  eligible  for  the  tall-ships 
contest  of  last  year's  Olympic  Games. 
Her  captain  flew  up  to  see  me  in 
Paris.  Yes,  she  could  sail  into  and 
out  of  the  harbor  in  Marseilles,  just 
making  it,  and  dangerous  it  would 
be. 

Salvatore  Baccaloni,  the  Metropol- 
itan buffo,  arrived  from  America, 
ready  to  jjlay  the  ferryboat  captain. 
Lionel  Jeffries  flew  over  from  Eng- 
land to  discuss  playing  M.  Brun,  the 
tall  and  lanky  customs  inspector. 
Since  M.  Brun  was  supposed  to  be 
from  Lyons  and  a  foreigner  in 
Marseilles,  we  felt  we  could  take  the 
liberty  of  casting  an  Englishman  in 
that  part. 

Huge,  wonderful  Georgette  Anys 
walked  into  my  room.  She  was  ob- 
viously Fanny's  mother,  Honorine 
the  fishwife.  But  she  could  scarcely 
speak  English.  We  decided  to  take 
the  chance;  she  went  into  intensive 
diction   lessons. 

Suddenly,  the  cameraman  we  had 
been  counting  on  to  photograph  our 
picture  became  unavailable.  Zinn 
Arthur,  my  public  relations  assistant, 
suggested  that  we  try  for  Jack 
Cardiff,  the  master  cameraman  of  the 
early  days  of  Technicolor.  Cardiff 
had  just  directed  Sons  and  Lovers, 
to  be  shown  at  the  Cannes  Festival. 
He  was  now  a  full-fledged  director, 
and    a    distinguished   one.     Perhaps 


You'll  never  Qnd  sl  gentler  Scotch  than 
Bell's.  Yet  its  taste  has  real  authority. 
Bell's  "12"  (Royal  Vat)  Mellowed 
for  twelve  years  in  the  wood,  it  has 
reached  the  age  of  greatness. 
Bell's  Special  Reserve  An  excep- 
tional Scotch  at  a  popular  price.  Just 
as  light  as  Bell's  "12"- and  its  equal 
in  everything  but  years. 

86  PROOF.  BLENDED  SCOTCH  WHISKY.  ®HEUBLEIN,  INC.. 
HARTFORD.  CONN.,  1961,  SOLE  DISTRIBUTORS  FOR  THE  U.S.A. 


16 


AFTER     HOURS 


he  Avould  consider  the  job  of  camera- 
man a  step  doAvn.  By  some  miracle 
he  did  not  then  have  another  direc- 
torial offer,  and  decided  to  come  with 
us.   That  was  a  good  day. 

A  frantic  telephone  call  came 
from  Marseilles.  It  was  our  art  di- 
rector, Rino  Mondellini.  Permission 
to  build  our  sets  had  been  rescinded. 
The  people  of  Marseilles  were  up  in 
arms  that  their  beautiful  sidewalk 
had  been  disfigured  by  several  hun- 
dred holes  dug  into  it  by  pneumatic 
chills.  "Yes,  we  ga\c  \ou  permission, 
but  we  no^\'  take  it  back."  Without 
the  jiolcs  we  could  not  put  uj)  the 
supports;  without  the  supports 
the  sets  ^v'ould  blow  clown  during  the 
mistral.  ""With  all  those  holes,"  said 
Rino,  "it's  the  biggest  golf  course  in 
the  Av'orld!"  "We  laughed  but  we 
didn't  feel  like  laughing. 

We  all  flew  to  Nice  to  see  if  we 
could  use  the  old  harbor  there  and 
make  it  look  like  Marseilles.  Rut  I 
was  stubborn;  I  had  come  this  far 
to  photograph  Afarseilles  and  I  was 
not  going  back  \\ithout  accomplish- 
ing the  mission. 

Again  to  Marseilles,  \\niat  could 
we  do?  If  we  ])ointed  our  camera  in 
the  direc  tiou  to  the  left  of  the  port, 
it  Avas  all  right.  Once  we  swung  to 
the  right,  Marseilles  looked  like  a 
modern  city  of  bland,  scjuarc  con- 
crete. We  decided  to  j^hotograph  all 
the  scenes  two  ways.  As  the  camera 
looked  left,  we  woidd  be  in  Mar- 
seilles. When  we  swung  to  the  right, 
we  would  move  to  a  little  toAvn 
called  Cassis  where  there  were  old 
buildings  along  the  right  side  of  the 
harbor— and  then  by  cutting  the  two 
angles  together  we  could  recreate  the 
old  city.  This  was  complicated, 
difficult,  but  possible.  Peace  was 
restored. 

An  army  of  technicians,  actors  and 
their  families  arrived  in  Marseilles. 
Half  of  us  lived  in  Cassis,  seventeen 
miles  away.  Horst  liuchholz  arrived 
from  America  where  he  had  been 
fdming  The  Magnificent  Seven. 

Meantime,  everybcxly  in  Marseilles 
began  to  harangue  us  about  our  cast- 
ing. Taxi-drivers  said,  "How  can 
.Maurice  Chevalier  play  Panisse?  He's 
a  Parisian!  Charles  Boyer  in  the 
great  Raimu's  part?  Impossible!  He 
hasn't  got  the  accent!  .And  what 
about  this  German  boy?" 

.\  fishwife  at  the  vast  covered  fish 
market  cjn  the  left  bank  of  the  old 


harbor  asked  me,  "Who  is  going  to 
play  Fanny?"  When  I  said  Leslie 
Caron,  she  turned  and  looked  at  all 
of  her  associates  as  they  exchanged 
those  French  grimaces  and  shrugs 
which  can  mean  almost  anything. 
"Don't   you    like   her?  '    I    ventured. 

After  a  long  pause,  she  spoke  in 
a  very  careful  voice.  "She's  a  good 
dancer."   That  is  all  I  could  get. 

But  the  waiter  who  served  Mr. 
Buchholz  his  orange  juice  the  morn- 
ing before  we  took  off,  looked  him 
over  in  such  a  critical  way  that  my 
heart  almost  stopped  beating.  Fi- 
nally, he  noddecl  his  head  in  ap- 
j^roval.  Yes,  Horst  Buchholz  looked 
like  Marius.  The  waiter  was  willing 
to  let  us  proceed. 

THE  first  shot  I  planned  to  get  was 
of  Marius  up  in  the  shrouds  of  the 
square-rigged  ship,  sailing  past  the 
Chateau  d'lf,  looking  back  toward 
Marseilles.  For  this  we  had  brought 
a  helicopter  and  crew  from  England. 
And  then  I  learned  an  awful  fact. 
The  wind  that  fills  the  sails  of  a 
scjuare-rigged  ship  is  the  opposite 
wind  to  the  one  that  is  needed  to 
photograph  from  a  helicopter.  The 
helicopter  had  to  force  itself  against 
the  wind  in  order  to  remain  steady. 
Also,  if  the  wind  was  right  for  the 
sails,  the  sim  seemed  in  the  Avrong 
direction;  if  the  sun  was  right,  the 
helicopter  could  not  fly.  Horst  Buch- 
hcjlz  remained  up  in  the  rigging  for 
hours  as  the  helicopter  made  pass 
after  pass,  trying  to  photograph  the 
scene. 

AVhen  we  came  back  that  after- 
noon, exhausted,  discouraged,  we 
did  not  know  that  we  had  filmed 
the  most  exciting  shot  in  the  picture. 
We  met  a  jubilant  cre^v  who  had 
been  waiting  for  us.  "Marseilles  has 
capitulated!  The  picture  is  going  to 
be  a  great  success!"  Michel  Roman- 
off and  the  production  staff  were 
exultant.  "We  are  going  to  get  all 
the  co-operation  we  need  now." 

"What  happened?"   I   said. 

Michel  replied,  "The  helicojiter! 
The  citizenry  was  very  impressed 
that  you  would  go  to  such  trouble 
and  expense  as  to  actually  bring  a 
helicopter  to  photograph  their  city. 
Now  they  believe  it  actually  has  a 
chance!" 

Soon  our  problem  was  noi  their 
clisaj)proval  but  their  exhausting 
enthusiasm.     Would    we    use    their 


restaurant  for  the  actors  to  change 
their  clothes?  Could  five  hundred 
people  come  in  and  look  at  the  set? 
Teen-agers  swarmed  around  Leslie 
Caron  and  Horst  Buchholz  for  auto- 
grajjhs  and  conversation.  Would  we 
come  to  dinner  with  the  mayor? 
Would  we  have  lunch  with  the  port 
director?  The  assistant  mayor?  The 
assistant  port  director?  The  head  of 
police? 

Each  evening  we  had  to  attend  an 
"aperitif"  given  by  various  members 
of  the  crew,  which  meant  drinking  a 
Cinzano  or  pastis  at  a  nearby  bar 
before  taking  off  for  our  hotels. 

The  sun  shone  brightly  all  day 
long— the  hot  sun  of  the  Midi.  Al- 
phonse  Daudet  was  right.  Adjectives 
soon  became  superlatives.  It  was  the 
best  cast,  the  greatest  crew,  and  the 
finest  story  ever  told.  We  loved 
Marseilles  and  Marseilles  loved  us. 
The  cast  loved  each  other.  We 
patted  each  other  on  the  back  after 
every  scene.  Kisses,  hugs,  hand- 
shakes, aperitifs,  bouillabaisse,  ail- 
loli,  vin  rose.    Euphoria! 

*A  movie  company  is  apt  to  become 
slightly  high  under  the  worst  condi- 
tions. They  are  displaced  persons 
working  in  an  unfamiliar  place 
against  enormous  odds  of  weather 
and  time.  But  put  them  under  the 
hot  sun  of  the  Midi  and  the  cup  of 
truth  runneth  over. 


AS  I  write  this,  it  is  six  months 
since  we  stopped  shooting  the  pic- 
ture. Throughout  these  months  I 
have  been  running  the  film  in  the 
cutting-room,  trying  to  get  it  into 
the  correct  shape  to  be  distributed 
for  an  American  audience.  I  am  no 
longer  in  the  hot  Midi  sun.  The 
shadow  of  New  York  brings  realism 
back  to  me. 

I  am  optimistic  that  Americans 
and  Britishers  will  like  Fanny,  but 
1  worry  about  the  French.  Would 
we  like  to  see  a  French  company 
come  to  the  banks  of  the  Mississippi 
and  make  a  movie  of  Huckleberry 
Finn?  No  matter  how  good  it  was, 
no  matter  how  faithful  to  Mark 
Twain,  could  we  accept  a  freckled- 
faced  boy  in  a  tattered  straw  hat 
smoking  a  corncob  pipe  who  spoke 
French?  Or  think  of  Jim!  Aunt 
Polly!    The  widow  Douglas! 

oil,  no!  Like  Fanny,  the  idea's 
ridiculous— and  only  a  fool  would 
try  it. 


An  important  breakthrough  in  Hfe  insurance  planning 
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Mutual  Benefit  Life  service*  The  "Analagraph"  is  a 
scientific  device  that  lets  you  chart  your  family  protec- 
tion and  retirement  needs  •  A  pioneer  in  its  field,  the 
^^Analagraph"  complements  the  Mutual  Benefit  Life 
man's  experience  and  knowledge  to  furnish  superior 
life  insurance  service  •  Now,  through  the  magic  of  elec- 
tronics, a  new  dimension  has  been  added— the  "Electronic 
Analagraph  "•  Write  us  for  further  information. 

Benefit  is  our  middle  name 

MUTUAL  BENEFIT  LIFE 

INSURANCE  COMPANY    •    NEWARK,  NEW  JERSEY    •    SINCE   1845 


WdW 


Who  stopped  the  battle  inside  the  vitamin  tablet? 


The  vitamin  tablet  above,  wearing  the  inviting  pink  coat,  is  called  Vigran  M.  In  it,  10  vitamins  and  7  minerals  live  peacefully  together. 


Some  vitamins  are  natural-born  fighters,  into  one  of  the  tablet's  coatings.  And  they  set 
Dump  them  together  in  a  tablet  and  even-  up  a  system  that  checks  quality  and  potency 
tually  they'll  destroy  each  other.  About  3       more  than  200  different  times.  All  this  was 


billion  vitamin  tablets  ago, 
the  Squibb  Division  of  Olin 
figured  out  how  to  keep  vita- 
mins from  scrapping.  They 
put  A  and  D  into  separate 
granules.  They  put  Bi,  B-  and  C  into  their 
own  private  wrap.  They  took  B12,  the  one  all 


done  to  help  make  sure  that  a 
Squibb  vitamin  tablet  main- 
tains its  full  strength  not 
just  until  it  goes  into  the 
bottle  (that's  easy)  but  right 
up  to  the  moment  you  pop  it  into  your 
mouth.  ■  Another  creative  solution  to  a 


lin 


the  other  boys  pick  on,  and  tucked  it  safely       problem. . .from  the  Squibb  Division  of  Olin. 


OLIN  MATHIESON  CHEMICAL  CORPORATION,  400  PARK  AVENUE,  NEW  YORK     .  CHEMICALS  ■  ENERGY  •  INTERNATIONAL  •  METALS  •  PACKAGING  •  SQUIBB  •  WINCHESTER-WESTERN 


.'«W^*«»*o 


KCBS  San  Francisco  alerted  millions  to  the  importance  ot  \oting,  oliered  iolution^  to  ease  the 
cumbersome  local  registration  system  with  its  editorial  titled,  "Before  It's  Too  Late." 


KMOX  St.  Louis  urged  the  adoption  ot  an 
anti-fireworks  law. 


-WCBS  Nov  York  urged  the  New  York  State 
Legislature  to  support  a  bill  raising  the  mini- 
mum age  for  purchase  of  liquor  from  18  to  21. 


WBBM  Chicago  backed  the  Police  Superin- 
tendent's stand  that  his  department's  most  vital 
need  was  more  equipment,  not  more  manpower. 


JCNX  Los  Angeles  criticized  the  City  Council 
and  the  Park  and  Recreation  Commission  for 
the  3V2  year  delay  in  building  the  zoo. 


WCAL  Philadelphia  demanded  a  thorough  in- 
vestigation of  voting  frauds. 


VVEEI  Boston  criticized  the  mob  that  attacked  George  Lincoln  Rockwell,  self-proclaimed  fuehrer 
of  the  American  Nazi  Party.  The  station  pointed  out  that  freedom  of  speech  applies  to  everyone. 


These  editorials  are  not  from  seven  of 
Annerica's  most  important  newspapers. 
They  represent  the  voices  of  the  seven 
radio  stations  across  America  that  share 
the  belief  that  radio  has  something  to  say 
as  well  as  something  to  ploy. 

This,  in  fact,  sets  the  CBS  Owned  Radio 
Stations  opart.  They  take  an  active  posi- 
tion on  important  issues  within  their  com- 
munities. They  take  o  stand.  They  not  only 
encourage  rebuttals.  They  seek  ihem  out. 


Last  year  164  special  editorials  were 
broadcast  by  these  seven  strategically 
placed  stations.  This  year  editorials  are 
continuing  at  on  even  greater  rate.  The 
result — within  earshot  of  millions  of  listen- 
ers—is idea  radio.  Broadcasting  put  to 
positive,  stimulating  use. 

Recently  Stotion  KCBS  in  Son  Francisco 
-/on  the  Notional  hHeadliners  Club  Award 
I  jr  the  Best  Radio  Editorials  in  the  nation, 
r<.      •/•/''n'^  ir.  New  York  received  the  Ohio 


State  University  Regional  Award  for 
"Opinion  On  The  Air,"  its  series  of  ■v^ll- 
documented  editorials. 

Wherever  there  is  a  CBS  Owned  Radio 
Station  the  listener  knows  he  con  hear  this 
kind  of  informed  stand  on  what's  happen- 
ing near  his  doorstep.  Wherever  there  is 
this  kind  of  idea  radio  the  sponsor  knows 
he  con  reach  people  who  listen  closelv  ^'~'"' 
respond  actively. 
THE  CBS  OWNED  RADIO  STATIONS 

Represented  by  CBS  Radio  Spot  Sales 


Harper 

magaJIzi  ne 


A  WARNING  TO 


WALL  STREET 
AMATEURS 


PETER    B.    BART 


Dreams  of  the  affluent  society  and  the  space  age 

— plus  an  old-fashioned  urge  to  gamble — have 

brought  hundreds  of  thousands  of  greenhorns  into 

the  stock  market.  .  .  .  Many  of  them  are  behaving 

so  foolishly  that  they  scare  even  the  old  pros. 

ON  E  ot  the  more  popular  stories  making 
the  rounds  of  Wall  Street  saloons  this 
spring  concerned  the  ielloAv  ^vho  called  his 
broker  and  asked  him  to  buy  lour  himdred 
shares  of  a  company  called  Ultrasonics  Precision. 
When  the  broker  asked  whether  his  customer 
knew  anything  special  about  the  company  the 
customer  replied:  "My  barber  told  me  to  buy 
it— he's  given  me  some  good  tips  lately." 

The  transaction  was  completed,  but  two  weeks 
later,  after  the  next  haircut,  the  customer  called 
again.  "I  was  all  wrong,"  he  said,  "^^y  barber 
recommended  Ultrasonics  Industries,  not  LHtra- 
sonics  Precision.  Sell  Ultrasonics  Precision  and 
buy  me  the  right  one. "  The  broker  did  as  di- 


rected only  to  find  that  his  customer  had  cleared 
an  $800  profit  on  the  "wrong"  stock. 

The  story,  and  its  several  variations,  may  be 
apocryphal,  but,  like  most  such  tales,  it  tells 
something  of  the  tenor  of  the  times.  And  the 
tenor  of  the  times  on  "Wall  Street  these  days 
is  deeply  disturbing  to  many  thoughtful  finan- 
cial men  because  there  are  too  many  barbers 
and  friends  of  barbers  acting  exactly  like  the 
people  in  the  story. 

In  short,  \Vall  Street  is  worried  about  the 
growing  role  of  the  small  speculator  in  today's 
market.  It  was  this  sort  of  \\'orry  that  led  Keith 
Funston,  the  tall  and  august  President  of  the 
New  York  Stock  Exchange,  to  flash  a  warning 
signal  early  this  spring.  Addressing  the  jjublic 
in  the  manner  of  an  impatient  parent  \\ho  had 
just  caught  his  child  ^vith  a  hand  in  the  cooky 
jar,  Mr.  Piuiston  intoned:  "There  is  disquiet- 
ing evidence  that  some  j^eople  have  not  yet  dis- 
covered tliat  it  is  impossible  to  get  something 
for  nothing."  ,A  month  later  he  warned:  "The 
behavior  of  the  jjublic  makes  a  mockery  of  the 
word  'investing'." 

What  triggered  Mr.  Funston's  warnings  was  the 
sudden  specidative  lever  that  swept  the  market 
in   March,  April,  and   May.    Volume  soared   to 


22 


WARNING     TO     WALL     STREET     AMATEURS 


record  levels,  the  Dow- Jones  industrial  average 
hit  a  new  high,  standing-room-only  crowds  sud- 
denly materialized  at  many  lirokerage-house 
board  rooms,  and,  in  the  words  of  one  broker, 
"people  raced  around  buying  stock  as  if  they 
feared  there  wouldn't  be  any  left  the  next  day." 

The  sudden  mass  enthusiasm  for  the  stock 
market  was  attributed  to  several  factors— the  ap- 
parent end  of  the  recession,  the  change  of  Ad- 
ministration in  Washington,  the  prospect  of 
further  inflation.  But  it  also  reminded  Wall 
Street  of  an  important  change  that  has  taken 
place  in  the  securities  business  in  recent  years— 
namely,  that  the  stock  market  has  become  a  mass 
market.  Although  Wall  Street  has  worked  hard 
to  bring  about  this  change,  it  knows  remarkably 
little  about  the  new  "monster"  that  it  has  created. 

How  will  the  mass  market  behave  in  periods 
when  significant  gains  in  the  economy  appear  in 
the  offing?  How  will  it  respond  to  sudden  down- 
turns and  disappointments?  M^ill  it  be  able 
to  contain  its  speculative  surges?  No  one  pre- 
tends to  know  the  answers  to  these  questions, 
but  many  analysts  are  extremely  apprehensive 
about  what  the  answers  may  turn  out  to  be. 

"We  may  be  about  to  witness  a  phenomenon 
once  deemed  inconceivable— a  wave  of  mass  spec- 
idation  that  would  have  been  impossible  in  the 
1920s,"  said  Bradbury  K.  Thurlow,  vice  presi- 
dent and  treasurer  of  the  Wall  Street  firm  of 
Winslow,  Cohu  and  Stetson,  Inc.  "The  1929 
boom  may  actually  have  been  only  a  trial  run 
for  the  one  now  apparently  getting  luider  way." 
Mr.  Thurlow  pointed  out  that  in  1929  only 
about  1,500,000  people  owned  common  stocks 
while  today  the  number  of  share-owners  is  esti- 
mated at  fifteen  million.  The  big  brokerage 
houses,  noting  that  the  number  of  stockholders 
has  doubled  in  less  than  ten  years  and  that  new 
accounts  are  opening  at  a  record  clip,  hope  for 
a  share-owning  population  of  perhaps  thirty 
million  in  another  five  years  or  so. 

The  problem  with  a  speculative  boom  in  this 
sort  of  mass  market,  say  Mr.  Thurlow  and  many 
other  analysts,  is  that  it  would  inevitably  lead 
to  a  spectacular  bust— a  bust  which  could  destroy 
millions  of  investors  as  well  as  speculators  and 


As  a  financial  reporter  on  the  "Neiv  York 
Times,"  Peter  B.  Bart  has  been  watching  the  stock 
market  become  a  supermarket.  He  is  a  Swarthmore 
graduate  who  studied  also  at  the  London  School 
of  Economics  and  has  done  financial  and  general 
reporting  for  the  "Wall  Street  Journal"  and  Chicago 
"Sun-Times." 


give  the  market  a  "bad  name"  for  at  least  an- 
other generation. 

This  is  a  disquieting  prospect  for  Wall  Street 
leaders  who  have  struggled  long  and  hard  to 
enhance  the  stock  market's  "corporate  image." 
Thanks  to  their  efforts  and  expenditures,  the 
symbolism  of  the  bucket  shop  and  the  back- 
room manijiulator  has  been  banished,  and  a 
new  aura  of  gray-flannel  respectability  now  sur- 
rounds the  stock  market.  It  is  this  structure  of 
confidence  and  respectability  which  the  outbreak 
of  mass  speculation  threatens,  and  that  is  why 
Wall  Street  is  uneasy. 

NO     MATTER     WHAT, 
IF     it's     new 

ALTHOUGH  the  speculative  fever  has 
affected  all  facets  of  the  securities  busi- 
ness, it  has  focused  particularly  on  small, 
relatively  unknown  companies- especially  com- 
panies selling  stock  to  the  public  for  the  first 
time.  So  strong  has  been  the  swing  to  the  little 
companies  that  some  analysts  have  labeled  it 
"the  revolt  against  the  blue  chips." 

The  "new  issues"  were  a  fit  target  for  specu- 
lation. For  one  thirtg,  companies  selling  stock 
to  the  public  for  the  first  time  generally  issue 
a  small  amount  of  shares.  And  because  there  are 
so  few  shares  in  the  hands  of  the  public  the 
price  can  be  driven  up  even  by  a  minor  surge  of 
interest.  Moreover,  the  new  shares  usually  are 
issued  at  prices  designed  to  attract  investor  in- 
terest. In  a  bull  market,  these  often  are  bargain 
prices  indeed. 

Finally,  many  of  the  new  companies  "going 
public"  are  in  space-age  industries  and  bear  such 
melodramatic  names  as  Datamation,  Electro- 
Sonic  Laboratories,  Electronics  Missiles  Com- 
pany. Corporate  names  like  these  have  pull  in 
the  market.  (Agricultural  Equipment  Corpora- 
tion, a  manufacturer  of  weed  burners,  re- 
cently changed  its  name  to  Thermodynamics, 
Inc.,  prior  to  issuing  stock.) 

As  a  result  of  these  various  factors,  brokers 
have  been  besieged  by  customers  demanding 
shares  in  the  new  issues,  and  the  prices  have 
taken  off  like  rockets.  Companies  like  Packard 
Instrument,  Renwell  Electronics,  and  Pneumo- 
dynamics  have  doubled  within  days  of  the  stock 
issue.  Stock  in  Alberto-Culver,  a  small  producer 
of  hair  tonic  and  shampoo,  was  issued  at  $10 
and  soared  almost  immediately  to  .1525  a  share. 
Shares  in  one  company  bearing  the  non-space-age 
name  of  Mother's  Cookie  Company  leaped  from 
$15  to  .'i;25  within  forty-eight  hours.  Cove  Vita- 


BY     PETER     B.     BART 


23 


mill  and  Pharmaceutical  went  from  $3  to  $60  in 
three  months. 

"My  customers  don't  even  want  to  kno^v  what 
a  company  manufactures  or  what  its  earnings 
prospects  are,"  said  one  young  Wall  Street  broker. 
"If  it's  a  new  issue  they  want  it,  Avhatcver  the 
case." 

Some  Wall  Street  firms  have  tried  to  cool 
the  ardor  of  their  customers.  White,  Weld  and 
Company  refused  to  open  accounts  for  customers 
who  were  interested  solely  in  new  issues.  Merrill 
Lynch,  Pierce,  Fenner  and  Smith  made  a  sur- 
vey of  forty-six  companies  that  had  issued  stock 
during  the  1945-46  new-issues  boom,  and  fotuid 
that  only  two  of  the  companies  now  are  selling 
above  the  offering  price. 

These  efforts  in  general,  however,  were  with- 
out much  effect.  "In  this  kind  of  situation  a 
broker  is  like  a  prostitute,"  reflected  a  high 
official  of  one  old-line  Wall  Street  firm.  "If  we 
turn  away  any  business  we  know  darn  well  they'll 
just  take  it  elsewhere." 

The  basic  problem  with  a  new-issues  boom, 
however,  is  that  it  tends  to  be  self-propelling. 
Public  enthusiasm  for  the  newly  issued  securities 
encourages  more  companies  to  bring  out  stock- 
thus  there  are  more  new  secinitics  registration 
statements  before  the  Securities  and  Exchange 
Commission  at  this  time  than  ever  before  in  that 
agency's  history.  Mean^vhilc.  prestige  luider- 
writers  who  formerly  snubbed  smaller  issues  have 
suddenly  developed  a  fondness  for  them  because 
of  tlie  profits  involved.  And  the  small  specida- 
tor  is  encouraged  all  the  more  to  dive  into  the 
new-issues  market  because  he  sees  such  distin- 
guished firms  backing  the  shares. 

CULT     OF     GROWTH     STOCKS 

ANOTHER  reason  it  is  difficult  to  bring 
order  to  the  new-issues  boom  is  that  most 
new  offerings  first  appear  on  the  volatile  over- 
the-counter  market,  where  they  are  harder  to 
control  than  on  the  exchanges.  In  fact,  it  is 
here  that  the  most  frenzied  speculation  has  taken 
place  not  only  in  new  issues  but  in  established 
stocks  as  well. 

The  over-the-counter  market  is  something  of 
a  misnomer,  since  there  is  no  counter  and  no 
clearly  defined  market— that  is  to  say,  no  central 
place  where  the  shares  are  auctioned  off  as  in  the 
case  of  the  New  York  Stock  Exchange  or  the 
American  Stock  Exchange.  The  so-called  "mar- 
ket" consists  of  some  five  thousand  dealers  in 
offices  scattered  all  over  the  country,  each  of 
whom  has  a  battery  of  phones  and  a   nervous 


stomach.  Nonetheless,  it  is  the  nation's  biggest 
mechanism  lor  trading  securities,  with  five  times 
as  many  stocks  regularly  traded  as  on  the  "Big 
Board"  of  the  New  York  Stock  Exchange.  It  has 
long  served  as  a  proving  ground  for  small  com- 
panies as  well  as  a  pleasant  retreat  for  established 
concerns  which  shy  from  the  jjublicity  surround- 
ing the  major  exchanges  or  don't  want  to  dis- 
close data  required  to  attain  a  listing  on  the 
exchanges. 

However,  as  a  resiili  ol  the  lad  lor  new  issues 
and  the  general  surge  of  speculation  in  relatively 
unknown  companies,  the  apparatus  for  over-the- 
coimter  trading  has  been  strained  to  the  break- 
ing point.  Dealers  in  over-the-counter  secvnities 
use  words  like  "fantastic"  and  "unbelievable" 
to  describe  their  volume  of  business,  and  many 
say  that  they  made  more  money  in  commissions 
during  the  first  quarter  of  1961  than  during 
all  of"  1960. 

If  many  of  the  old  timers  on  the  over-the- 
counter  market  have  been  awed  by  the  tre- 
mendous volume,  they've  been  equally  aghast 
at  the  way  in  which  the  jjublic  has  cast  aside 
the  traditional  yardsticks  used  in  evaluating 
stocks.  These  yardsticks  involved  such  consid- 
erations as  the  dividend  yield  (5  per  cent  was 
considered  reasonable)  or  the  "price-earnings 
ratio"— the  relationshij)  between  a  company's 
earnings  and  the  price  of  the  stock.  (If  a  stock 
sold  at  more  than  ten  or  tAvelve  times  the  com- 
pany's earnings,  many  brokers  used  to  consider 
it  overpriced.)  In  today's  market,  A\iih  attention 
focused  on  so-called  groAvth  stocks,  j)eople  clamor 
to  buy  stocks  which  have  no  yields  and  sell  at 
fifty  or  one  hundred  times  earnings.  Thus  in 
May  IBM  was  selling  at  75  times  earnings.  Po- 
laroid at  95  times  earnings,  and  Fairdiild  Cam- 
era at  60  times  earnings. 

"It's  possible  to  argue  that  the  IBMs  and 
Polaroids  are  well  worth  their  current  j)rice," 
notes  Stephen  H.  Weiss  of  A.  G.  Becker  and 
Company.  "But  in  a  market  like  this  one  the 
good  growth  stocks  tend  to  cast  their  aura  of 
glamour  around  do/ens  of  small,  unseasoned 
companies  operating  in  rotighly  parallel  fields. 
The  result  is  astronomical  and  imjustified  prices 
for  imknown,  unstable  stocks." 

The  cult  of  the  growth  stock  traces  its  origins 
to  several  sources.  For  one  thing,  it's  in  keeping 
with  the  speculative  spirit  of  the  times.  For  an- 
other, most  people  in  the  ui)per  tax  brackets 
prefer  to  maneuver  among  the  esoteric,  low- 
yield  growth  stocks  and  pay  a  capital-gains 
tax  limited  to  25  per  cent  rather  than  pay  higher 
taxes    on    dividend    income.    Finally,    investors 


24 


\V  A  R  M  N  G     TO     \\  A  L  L     STREET     A  M  A  T  E  L  R  S 


figure  thai  the  sjiowth  stocks  hold  mit  the  bright- 
est  prospects  tor  short-term  appreciation  rather 
than  the  once-popular  but  shiggishly  perform- 
ing "bhie  chips." 

The  growth-minded  nnxul  ot  the  current  mar- 
ket was  effectively,  it  unintentionalh  parodied 
not  long  ago  bv  comedians  Lou  Holt/  and  jack 
Paar  when  Mr.  Holt/  confided  to  Mr.  Paar  on  a 
national  television  show  that  he  tmned  a  stock 
listed  on  the  American  Exchange  \\hich  would 
move  from  $10  to  SI. 000  in  ten  years.  The  follow- 
ing dav  was  a  memorable  one  for  the  Exchanges 
510  stocks.  The  favorite  with  the  television- 
minded  specidators  was  a  company  named  MPO 
\ideoironics.  and  trading  in  that  stock  couldn't 
be  opened  until  a  few  miniues  before  the  close 
because  of  a  rush  of  buv  orders.  .\las.  the  com- 
panv  proved  to  be  a  double  disappointment. 
To  begin  with,  it  wasn't  the  stock  Mr.  Holtz 
had  in  mind:  and  its  principal  product  turned 
out  to  be  television  commercials. 

As  one  Wall  Street  analvst  commented  on  the 
whole  episode.  "Never  have  so  many  people  in- 
vested so  much  money  so  stupidly. ' 

TIGHTENING     THE     SCREWS 

TH  E  Jack  Paar-Lou  Holt/  incident  was 
liardlv  the  onlv  case  in  which  stocks  sud- 
denlv  took  oft  under  mvsterious  circumstances. 
In  this  case,  of  course,  the  luiderlving  cause 
seemed  to  be  innocent  enough.  In  a  number  of 
other  cases,  however,  the  suspicion  of  manipula- 
tion hung  over  the  market. 

There  is  no  wav  of  knowing  how  much  old- 
fashioned  price  rigging  takes  place  in  Wall  Street 
todav.  i.e..  the  creation  of  an  artificial  demand 
to  buv  or  sell  a  stock  bv  influential  insiders. 
Some  financial  men  scoff  at  the  idea;  others 
insist,  however,  that  price  rigging  persists  to  an 
alarmin?  extent  and  is  a  verv  real  threat  to 
public  confidence. 

The  fKwition  of  the  latter  group  Avould  appear 
to  gain  credence  from  several  recent  actions  of 
the  Securities  and  Exchange  Commission  ag;iinst 
prominent  \Vall  Street  finns.  The  most  speciac- 
idar  case  involved  charges  of  massive  rigging 
and  illegal  distribution  of  SIO  million  worth  of 
seciuities.  In  Mav.  these  charges  rcNulted  in  the 
expulsion  of  Gerard  A.  Re  and  his  son.  Gerard 
F.  Re.  from  the  .\merican  Stock  Exchange.  Re. 
Re  and  Sag-arese  at  one  time  A\as  one  of  the 
largest  specialist  finns  on  the  American  Ex- 
change. 

The  Re  case  aroused  a  great  deal  of  comment 
for  several   reasons.   For  one   thing,    it   was   the 


first  lime  since  the  establishment  of  the  SEC 
in  \9M  that  the  agencv  had  taken  action  against 
a  specialist.  The  specialists  role  is  a  pivotal  one 
on  the  exchanges,  since  he  is  charged  with  the 
responsibility  of  maintaining  an  orderly  auction 
market  in  those  securities  assigned  to  him. 

Moreover,  one  of  the  nianv  prominent  men 
who  had  been  victimized  by  some  of  the  Re  deals 
was  Edward  T.  McCormick.  president  of  the 
American  Stock  Exchange. 

As  part  of  its  crackdown  on  market  manipula- 
tion, the  SEC  announced  that  it  woidd  inidertake 
an  investigation  of  the  American  Stock  Exchange. 
Meanwhile,  it  brought  disciplinarx  action 
against  Bruns,  Xordeman  and  Company,  for 
manipidating  the  price  of  shares  in  Gob  Shops 
of  America,  a  small  chain  of  Rhode  Island 
stores,  and  against  an  luiderwriter.  R.  A.  Hol- 
man  and  Companv.  on  charges  of  holding  back 
shares  in  a  stock  sale  in  order  to  create  an  arti- 
ficial demand.  The  SEC  also  warned  under- 
writers against  so-called  "tie-in  sales'"  in  which 
newly  issued  securities  are  sold  on  condition  that 
the  buyer  later  will  purchase  an  additional 
amount  on  the  open  market. 

While  the  SEC  was  cracking  down  on  some 
of  the  more  blatant  market  malpractices,  the 
exchanges  also  were  tightening  the  screws  in 
other  areas.  The  New  York  Stock  Exchange,  for 
example,  recentlv  stiftened  its  requirements  for 
getting  a  stock  listed.  The  New  York  and  Amer- 
ican Exchanges  have  stepped  up  their  so-called 
"stock  watching "  activities,  in  which  staff  mem- 
bers quietiv  investigate  situations  where  prices 
suddenlv  spint  or  volume  soars  for  no  appar- 
ent reason.  The  Xew  York  Exchange  also  re- 
minded companies  on  the  Big  Board  of  their 
(Obligation  to  disclose  immediatelv  anv  informa- 
tion that  might  have  an  effect  on  the  prices  of 
listed  securities. 

The  Big  Board's  warning  was  precipitated  by 
a  series  of  incidents  in  which  important  com- 
panies were  especially  obvious  in  "leaking"  in- 
formation in  advance  of  official  annoiuicements. 
One  big  electronics  companv.  for  example,  took 
groups  of  reporters  and  security  analvsts  out  to 
see  an  imp<irtant  new  computer  several  days 
before  the  siorv  was  to  be  released  for  publica- 
tion. The  visits  generated  sufficient  riunors  to 
push  up  the  slock  by  five  points  during  the  two 
days  immediatelv  preceding  the  announcement. 

It  is  this  sort  of  practice  which  has  given  new 
I  urrencv  to  the  old  \\'all  Street  sa\ing:  "Buy  on 
the  rumor  and  sell  on  the  news."  The  reason- 
ing behinil  it  is  that  when  importaiu  news 
is   brewing   about   a   compain— a    merger,   stock 


i 


BY     PETER     E.     BART 


split,  or  important  new  product— the  stock  ^vill 
rise  until  the  story  hits  the  papers  and  then  will 
decline.  The  effect  is  to  put  the  squeeze  on  the 
gullible  investor  ^vho  is  impressed  by  Avhat  he 
reads  in  the  paper— and  to  increase  the  flocking 
of  lambs  into  ^Vall  Street  for  shearing. 

Burton  Crane,  the  stock-market  columnist  of 
the  New  York  Times,  traced  the  market  perform- 
ances of  t^venty-eight  companies  ^vhich  had  an- 
nounced stock  splits  and  loiuid  that  nearly  all 
had  climbed  in  the  ^veeks  prior  to  the  announce- 
ment. However,  far  more  stocks  fell  than  rose 
dtning  the  period  immediately  following  release 
of  the  news.  Thus  some  cynical  members  of  the 
financial  press  refer  to  many  of  their  stories  as 
"near-news"  rather  than  news.  "Near-ne^vs"  is 
information  that  has  been  methodically  leaked 
to  all  persons  w\\o  might  possibly  have  interest 
in  the  story  and  ^vho  might  be  in  a  position  to 
profit  from  advance  knowledge. 

The  expanded  role  of  "near-news"  has  coin- 
cided with  the  grooving  importance  of  special 
stock  deals  in  that  part  of  the  public  relations 
industry  which  specializes  in  publicizing  and  dis- 
tributing financial  and  business  news.  More  and 
more  companies  now  include  some  sort  of  stock 
arrangement  as  part  of  the  total  remuneration 
paid  to  public  relations  agencies.  For  instance, 
many  corporations  grant  stock  options  to  the 
PR  agencies  which  allow  them  to  buy  stocks 
at  their  original  low  prices  well  after  they  have 
increased  in  value.  The  effect  has  been  to  focus 
the  attention  of  the  PR  people  on  the  price  of  the 
stock  rather  than  on  getting  out  the  news,  so  that 
some  agencies  have  become  "stock  touts"  rather 
than  publicists. 


These  jjractices  raise  deeply  disturbing  ques- 
tions: Does  the  small  investor  or  even  the  small 
speculator  get  a  fair  break  in  the  market?  Does 
he  have  proper  access  to  corporate  news?  Is  he 
victimized  by  market  riggers?  When  speaking 
for  public  consumption  on  these  questions, 
nearly  all  \Vall  Streeters  take  the  position  that 
(a)  the  market  is  basically  honest,  (b)  thev  are 
nonetheless  concerned  lest  arrant  speculation  or 
a  few  -well-publicized  cases  of  price  riggint;  may 
seriously  shake  pidilic  confidence  in  the  market. 

"You  can  never  do  a^xay  ^vith  the  'insiders,' 
and  you  can  never  get  arotmd  the  fact  that  some 
people  inevitably  are  going  to  kno^v  things  and 
profit  from  this  knowledge  ■while  others  w\\\  re- 
main in  the  dark,"  said  one  experienced  Wall 
Street  analyst.  "Thus  people  are  certainly  not 
competing  on  eqtial  terms  in  the  stock  market. 
But,  nonetheless,  ^vithin  this  framcAvork  we  must 
strive  to  make  things  as  equitable  as  possible. 
In  the  stock  market  everyone  should  be  equal, 
even  though  some  people  inevitably  will  be  a 
little  more  ecjual  than  others." 

It  Avas  the  great  misforttuie  of  Dr.  Irving 
Fisher,  the  distingtiished  economist  at  Yale  from 
1893  to  1935,  to  have  achieved  immortality  ^vith 
a  misjudgment.  Said  Dr.  Fisher  in  1929:  "Stock 
prices  haAC  reached  what  looks  like  a  perma- 
nently high  plateau." 

Not  many  people  talk  about  "permanently 
high  plateaus"  any  more.  Many  Wall  Street  an- 
alysts currently  seem  to  subscribe  to  an  economic 
adaptation  of  Newton's  law  that  every  action 
has  an  equal  and  opposite  reaction.  They  the- 
orize that  every  boom  runs  to  excess  and  inev- 
itably  generates   some    sort   of   "correction"    or 


m 


"The  flocking  of  lambs  into  Wall  Street  for  shearing.' 


26 


WARNING     TO     WALL     STREET     AMATEURS 


downturn  in  the  market.  This  principle  places 
the  analysts  in  something  of  an  ambivalent  posi- 
tion, to  be  sure,  since,  though  Wall  Street  thrives 
on  booms,  it  also  knows  that  the  greater  the 
boom,  the  greater  may  be  the  correction. 

POISED     TO     RUN     AWAY 

AT  PRESENT,  there  are  fears  that  Wall 
Street  may  be  poised  for  a  speculative 
boom  of  run-away  proportions  and  that  the 
"shakeout"  or  "correction"  which  will  follow 
may  do  a  great  deal  of  damage  to  the  investing 
public. 

There  is  much  disagreement  over  what  may 
trigger  the  "shakeout."  It  could  be  an  unexpected 
diplomatic  crisis  in  Berlin,  Southeast  Asia,  or 
some  other  trouble  spot;  or  a  sudden  "flood 
tide  of  corporate  larceny"— the  ruthless  milking 
of  corporate  assets  by  high  executives— which, 
according  to  J.  K.  Galbraith,  was  a  factor  in 
the  1929  crash;  or  a  loss  of  public  confidence 
due  to  disclosures  of  serious  manipulation,  or 
any  number  of  other  factors.  If  conditions  were 
sufficiently  sensitive,  it  wouldn't  require  too 
catastrophic  an  incident  to  set  ofi:  a  shakeout 
since  the  movement  of  relatively  few  shares  es- 
tablishes the  prices  for  all  shares  of  stock.  (Only 
a  small  percentage  of  the  total  amount  of  stock 
in  existence  is  actively  traded  in  the  market.) 
If  and  when  a  break  does  occur,  the  market 
will  be  proj^elled  downward  by  a  number  of 
forces.  For  instance,  insiders  in  companies  whose 
stock  has  only  recently  been  issued  to  the  public 
—and  has  enjoyed  great  increase  in  value- may 
well  try  to  unload  a  good  part  of  their  holdings. 
And  other  "paper  millionaires"  will  no  doubt 
join  them. 

"Whatever  the  causes,  however,  surprisingly  few 
Wall  Streeters  are  prepared  to  suggest  steps  to 
ward  off  a  "bust."  In  a  society  of  mass  affluence, 
they  reason,  there's  little  that  can  be  done  to 
prevent  people  from  gambling  away  their  money. 
Lifting  margins  or  curbing  the  activities  of  non- 
regulated  lenders  would  be  of  little  use,  they 
argue,  because  most  of  the  speculation  in  today's 
market  takes  place  on  a  cash  basis.  "If  the 
public  wants  to  shoot  craps,  there's  nothing  we 
ran  do  about  it,"  says  one  high  SEC  official. 

There  are,  of  course,  several  long-range  meas- 
ures that  could  be  taken  and  that  have  the  sup- 
port of  Wall  Street:  chiefly,  increased  efforts  to 
educate  the  public  in  the  economics  of  the  stock 
market  and  in  economics  in  general.  Secondly, 
just  as  investors  should  be  better  informed,  so 
should  their  brokers.  The  big  Wall  Street  houses 


have  done  much  in  recent  years  to  improve  the 
caliber  of  their  staffs.  But  there  are  still  too  many 
ill-prepared,  ill-educated  brokers  in  the  securities 
business,  who  mislead  their  customers— if  not 
cheat  them. 

These  are  problems  that  must  be  tackled  over 
the  long  term.  On  the  more  immediate  level, 
some  Wall  Streeters  and  independent  observers 
favor  several  short-term  devices  to  curb  the  ex- 
cesses in  the  market: 

1.  A  crackdown  on  the  advertising  placed  by 
some  investment  advisory  services  which  make 
get-rich-quick  promises. 

2.  A  further  increase  in  the  staffs  maintained 
by  the  SEC  and  the  major  exchanges  to  watch 
for  price  rigging  and  other  irregularities. 

3.  Continued  warnings  to  the  public  by  the 
exchanges  themselves— and  even  by  officials  in 
Washington— against  the  dangers  of  excessive 
speculation.  (Mr.  Funston  issued  another  such 
warning  in  mid-May.) 

4.  A  greater  effort  at  self-policing  by  the  finan- 
cial community  in  general.  For  instance,  prestige 
firms  should  refuse  to  underwrite  stock  offerings 
for  undercapitalized  and  poorly  managed  en- 
terprises. 

5.  A  tightening  of  SEC  rules  governing  new 
issues,  which  would  require  fuller  disclosure 
of  financial  information  by  companies  involved, 
and  the  certification  of  the  accuracy  of  such 
information  for  small  as  well  as  large  stock 
issues.  (At  present,  no  certification  by  account- 
ants is  required  for  stock  offerings  of  $300,000 
or  less.) 

6.  New  legislation  giving  the  SEC  stricter 
controls  over  securities  trading  and  over  new  is- 
sues, enabling  it,  for  example,  to  bar  doubtful 
companies  from  selling  stocks  to  the  public. 

These  reforms— not  to  mention  more  radical 
proposals— are  likely  to  run  up  against  the  laissez- 
faire  instincts  of  the  financial  community.  How- 
ever, there  are  now  increased  stirrings  in 
Washington  for  Congress  to  take  a  hand  in  the 
regulation  of  the  market.  Whether  new  controls 
come  from  Wall  Street  itself  or  from  Washington, 
there  is  growing  recognition  that  something  must 
be  done:  Having  transformed  the  securities  busi- 
ness into  a  truly  mass  market.  Wall  Street  must 
now  face  the  responsibilities  which  this  change 
entails.  Whether  it  will  or  not  is  an  open,  and 
urgent,  question. 

Harper's  Mngnzine,  July  1961 


I 


m^* 


Summer  is  another  country 

A    Story    by    CHRISTINE    WESTON 

Draivings  by  Thomas  Feelings 


EARLY  this  morning  Danny  Tracy  came  to 
mow  the  hay  on  my  field.  As  he  turned  off 
the  town  road  into  mine,  I  lek  rather  than  heard 
the  ponderous  tread  ol  his  horse's  great  fringed 
feet  on  the  ground,  and  ihe  delicate  creak  and 
jingle  of  the  mowing  machine,  for  Danny  is  the 
only  man  in  oiu'  neighborhood  who  still  uses  a 
horse  and  old-fashioned  rig  lor  heavy  work. 

Still  half  asleep,  for  me  the  sovmd  of  these 
massive  feet  merged  with  the  long  half-dream  of 
another  time,  another  country.  I  was  standing 
with  my  parents  in  a  window  overlooking  a 
broad  street  somewhere  in  London  and  below  us 
passed  the  slow  and  majestic  cortege  of  King 
Edward  the  VII,  and  my  half-sleeping  eyes  were 
filled  once  more  with  a  sight  of  horses  with  black 
plumes  growing  from  their  foreheads,  of  grave- 
faced  men  in  splendid  dress,  and  after  more  than 
forty  years  my  ears  seemed  still  to  retain  the 
shuddering  ruffle  of  velvet-covered  drums.  As  the 
long  processional  unwound  beneath  us  I  heard 
my  mother  saying:  "That  must  be  the  Tsar!" 
And  my  father  said:  "And  there  goes  the  King 
of  Montenegro!" 


In  my  school  history  book  there  used  to  be  a 
map  of  Europe,  and  Montenegro  was  the  smallest 
country  in  it,  colored  a  pale  lavender.  As  a  child 
I  always  had  an  idea  of  it  as  being  on  a  scale 
with  the  little  painted  wooden  people  and  ani- 
mals in  a  toy  Noah's  Ark,  so  when  I  gazed  down 
at  the  scene  beneath  that  window  I  expected  the 
King  of  Montenegro  to  be  something  tiny  and 
in  keeping  with  his  infinitesimal  domain.  The 
thud  of  horses'  feet,  the  muted  jingle  of  harness, 
drums  under  their  covering  of  purple  velvet- 
then  I  was  really  awake,  and  outside  my  window 
a  late  October  sun  was  resuscitating  a  few  frozen 
flies,  and  I  could  hear  Danny  Tracy  deep  in 
conversation  with  his  horse. 

I  dressed  and  put  the  kettle  on  for  coffee  and 
went  outdoors.  Danny  had  already  started  mov- 
ing up  the  field  and  the  early  light  touched  his 
old  gray  coat  and  the  horse's  pointed  ears  and 
made  a  channel  of  golden  pallor  on  the  fallen 
hay.  What  stood  had  a  pink  glow  in  it  like  the 
reflected  heat  from  a  distant  fire,  and  as  Danny 
came  to  the  end  of  the  field  and  turned,  the 
starlings   arrived— hundreds    of    them    from    no- 


28 


SUMMER  IS  ANOTHER  COUNTRY 


where,  black,  glittering  flakes  which  settled  down 
in  the  fallen  hay  to  feed  on  the  crickets  and  the 
exposed  seeds  of  summer. 

When  Danny  reached  the  steps  where  I  stood, 
he  paused  to  say  hello  and  I  saw  the  tobacco 
juice  trickling  down  his  face,  which,  at  seventy- 
six,  had  taken  on  the  color  and  texture  of  old, 
weevil-ridden  wood. 

"Nice  day,"  he  said.  "Wind  in  the  nor'west, 
looks  like  we're  in  for  a  stretch  of  fine  weather." 

Country  people  deal  in  the  obvious  as  they 
deal  in  small  coin.   It  is  often  all  they  possess. 

"You're  late  this  year,  Danny,"  I  said.  "I  was 
beginning  to  wonder  whether  you  would  ever 
get  around  to  taking  the  hay." 

He  laid  the  reins  on  the  horse's  back  and 
looked  at  me. 

"Been  awful  busy  this  fall.  Hattie,  she  sud- 
denly got  one  of  her  spells  of  wanting  something 
new,  and  nothing  would  do  but  what  we  got  to 
put  in  a  bathroom."  He  brought  it  out  with  in- 
tense deliberation,  as  though  speaking  of  child- 
birth or  a  serious  operation.  "A  bathroom,  mind 
you.  After  fifty  years  of  doing  without  one,  she 
suddenly  got  to  have  a  bathroom  for  no  better 
reason  but  that  Nita  Merrit  just  got  one." 

I  looked  at  the  horse,  named  Hero,  standing 
stoically  in  his  collar,  his  blond  mane  exactly 
the  color  of  the  hay  around  him.  Seen  in  profile, 
Danny  and  his  horse  had  the  look  of  relatives- 
one  perpendicular,  spare  as  a  stick,  with  a  great 
curving  nose,  the  other  horizontal,  huge,  with  a 
nose  like  a  landslide,  and  both  of  them— man  and 
horse,  brothers  in  an  inexhaustible  patience. 

I  asked  Danny  whom  he  had  employed  to 
install  the  new  bathroom,  and  before  answering 
he  sent  a  jet  of  tobacco  juice  over  the  off-wheel, 
then:  "Hollis  Merrit  from  Machias.  Best  there 
is,  and  I  figured  we  going  to  sink  all  that  money 
in  a  drain,  might  as  well  do  it  right." 

Hero  changed  feet  and  flipped  his  long  blond 
tail  and  Danny  went  on:  "One  reason  I  been  so 
long  getting  around  to  your  field,  I  been  helping 
Hollis  with  the  ditching  for  the  bathroom  drain. 
Takes  two  men  and  it  ain't  rightly  Hollis's  job 
nohow.  Wasn't  he's  cousin  to  Hattie,  he  never 
would  lay  a  hand  to  a  shovel,  what  with  his 
education  and  all." 

"But  what  about  you,  Danny!"  I  exclaimed. 


Born  in  India  of  French  and  English  parents, 
Christine  Weston  married  an  American  in  1923. 
She  lives  in  Maine  hut  travels  a  good  deal,  and  has 
written  many  stories  and  several  novels,  including 
"Indigo"  and  ""The  Wise  Children." 


"Should  you  be  doing  such  hard  work?"  He 
looked  as  if  he  might  crack  in  two  like  an  old 
dried-out  plank.  I  went  on:  "Can't  you  get  one 
of  the  younger  men  around  to  lend  a  hand?" 

"Lend  a  hand  digging  a  drain?"  His  laugh  was 
toothless  and  interior.  "You  ever  tried  to  get  one 
of  them  young  ones  to  do  chores  around  here 
for  you?  No  sir.  They  got  other  ideas,  and  I 
can't  say  that  I  blame  them.  Driving  trucks  or 
working  at  a  filling  station  is  more  to  their  taste, 
and  that's  like  it  ought  to  be." 

I  started  to  disagree,  but  he  continued  as  if 
he  hadn't  heard: 

"Take  my  own  two  boys.  Junior's  with  that 
bus  outfit  as  a  driver  and  pulling  down  a  good 
salary,  and  Paul's  working  in  a  coffin  factory 
over  to  Boston,  Mass.  Why  should  they  be  want- 
ing to  hang  around  home,  breaking  their  backs 
shoveling  manure  or  working  off  their  taxes 
fixing  the  state  highways  like  I  have  to?" 

He  picked  up  the  reins  and  looked  at  me  with 
tiny  bright  blue  eyes.  "You  given  any  thought 
to  what  you're  going  to  do  about  having  the  hay 
cut  after  I'm  gone?" 

"Gone?"  I  echoed,  uncomprehending.  "Where 
in  the  world  are  you  planning  to  go,  Danny?" 

He  laughed  and  slapped  the  reins  on  Hero's 
broad  back. 

"Well,  we  all  got  a  choice  between  one  of  two 
places,  ain't  we?  Guess  I've  lived  a  good  clean 
life,  so  I  ain't  worrying  too  much." 

He  spoke  to  Hero,  who  turned  massively, 
drawing  the  light  machine  after  him,  and  I 
watched  them  start  another  swath,  disturbing  the 
starlings  which  rose  as  one,  described  a  glittering 
circle  over  Danny's  head,  then  sank  like  a  black 
snow  storm  in  the  leveled  hay. 

IW  E  N  T  into  the  house  and  made  breakfast 
and  carried  my  coffee  cup  to  the  window 
where  I  could  see  Danny  and  his  big  brown  horse 
move  up  and  down  the  long  golden  field,  and  I 
pondered  what  he  had  said,  asking  myself  what, 
indeed,  I  would  do  when  he  was  gone.  Ours  is 
not  a  wealthy  or  fashionable  part  of  the  world 
and  labor  is  scarce  and  for  the  most  part  un- 
skilled. Men  and  women  of  Danny's  generation 
and  a  little  younger  grew  up  in  an  age  when 
there  were  few  if  any  mechanical  devices.  They 
worked  with  their  hands  and  with  animals.  As 
he  said,  their  children  have  other  ideas,  and  it 
is  typical  of  a  man  like  Danny,  who  knows  well 
the  rigors  of  adversity,  to  desire  a  different  his- 
tory for  his  sons. 

When  I  walk  through  our  little  town  or  drive 
along    these    country    roads,    it    is    always    the 


A     STORY     BY     CHRISTINE     WESTON 


29 


% 


— ^,  H^- 


elderly  men  that  I  see  doing  the 
hard  work— straightening  heavy 
granite  sills,  raising  chimneys, 
painting  barns,  carpentering, 
digging,  planting,  sawing.  They 
have  the  know-how  and  they 
move  as  Danny  moves,  with  de- 
liberation, aware  without  senti- 
mentality or  regret  that  there 
is  no  hurry  about  anything,  any 
more. 

When  he  had  made  a  good 
start  on  my  field,  Danny  drove 
the  mower  up  beside  my  steps 
and  got  down  and  stretched, 
then  sat  beside  me  in  the  sun 
and  drank  a  cup  of  coffee  while 
Hero  bent  his  great  nose  into 
the  pail  of  water  I  had  remem- 
bered to  draw  for  him  at  the 
kitchen  sink. 

"Good  to  see  the  hay  come  down,"  I  said,  look- 
ing out  on  the  level  sweep  of  the  field  which 
glistened  in  the  sun.  "When  it's  all  cleared,  it 
seems  to  hold  the  winter  back  a  little.  Things 
look  more  the  way  they  do  in  spring,  before  the 
grass  has  begun  to  grow." 

Danny  sucked  the  coffee  between  his  three  re- 
maining teeth  and  said: 

"Before  you  bought  this  place  I  used  to  mow  it 
sometimes,  for  Asa  Merrit.  Always  been  good 
friends,  Asa  and  me,  but  I  never  did  get  along 
with  his  wife  Nita.  Don't  to  this  day,  and  prob- 
ably never  will." 

I  asked  what  had  caused  the  trouble,  and  he 
gave  his  sibilant,  almost  inaudible  laugh.  "I 
suppose  that  in  a  way  it  were  my  fault,  though 
I'd  as  soon  be  shot  as  let  Nita  think  so.  All  hap- 
pened on  account  of  her  cat." 

HERO  finished  drinking  and  fluttered  his 
velvety  lips  in  a  great  sigh  of  satisfaction, 
and  Danny  went  on:  "Nita  Merrit  always  was 
kind  of  soft  in  the  head  about  them  darned  cats 
of  hers.  Ever  noticed  how  some  women  get  that 
way?  Over  cats,  I  mean.  You  don't  hardly  ever 
see  a  man  make  a  fool  of  himself  over  cats.  Over 
dogs  yes,  maybe  over  horses."  He  gazed  for  a 
moment  at  Hero,  who  stood  before  us  staring 
thoughtfully  at  the  ground. 

"But  not  over  cats,"  Danny  said.  "Or  at  any 
rate  /  never  see  a  man  go  plumb  crazy  over  a 
cat  the  way  some  women  do."  He  tucked  a 
fresh  quid  of  tobacco  into  his  cheek  and  con- 
tinued: "Nita  always  owned  cats  and  does  to  this 
day,  as  you  know.  Well,  it  must  of  been  .  .  .  how 


old's  my  boy  Paul?  Going  on  thirty.  Must  of 
been  twelve  years  ago  it  happened.  Nita  had  a 
whole  raft  of  cats  then,  but  her  favorite,  or  so 
she  made  it  out  to  be  at  the  time,  was  a  big  ugly 
brindled  tom  with  one  eye  but  plenty  of  every- 
thing else.  Spent  his  time  getting  all  the  other 
cats  in  the  neighborhood  into  trouble.  Anyways, 
he  was  a  great  hunter.  He'd  kill  anything  from 
mice  to  rabbits,  but  Nita— she  claimed  she  loved 
all  animals,  only  cats  the  most— Nita  held  out 
that  that  darned  yellow  tom  of  hers,  he  wouldn't 
hurt  a  flea.  No  more  he  did,  I  bet— he  was  full 
of  'em." 

Danny  chewed  meditatively  for  a  moment. 
"You  know  how  some  parents  are  apt  to  be 
about  a  worthless  kid?  The  more  worthless  and 
no-account,  the  more  they  dotes  on  him.  Well, 
that's  the  way  Nita  Merrit  was  about  that 
brindled  tom.  She  lived  in  mortal  fear  something 
would  happen  to  him  when  he  was  off  on  one  of 
his  safaris  up  and  down  the  road.  Why,  that 
cat'd  learned  that  when  the  hay's  cut  all  kind  of 
small  humble  critters  suddenly  comes  to  the  sur- 
face and  the  birds  come  down  to  feed  on  'em. 
Minute  he  heard  Hero  and  me  coming  down  the 
road  he'd  take  after  us.  No  matter  if  we  was  go- 
ing a  mile,  or  two  miles,  every  time  I  looked  back 
over  my  shoulder  there  was  Nita's  yellow  tom 
loping  along,  enough  murder  in  his  one  eye  as 
would  have  done  for  twenty  normal  cats.  When 
time  come  to  cut  the  hay,  there  was  Nita  stand- 
ing on  her  doorstep  hollering  for  me  to  wait  until 
she  got  the  tom  into  the  house.  Sometimes  she 
did,  sometimes  he  was  too  smart  for  her  and  was 
up  the  road  and  ahead  of  us.   It  most  drove  Nita 


30 


SUMMER  IS  ANOTHER  COUNTRY 


out  of  her  mind  because  she  was  afeard  he'd  get 
lost  in  the  long  hay  and  my  cutter-bar  would 
shear  the  legs  often  him.  Or  else  Hero  would 
step  on  him.  She  made  me  swear  I  never  would 
start  mowing  without  first  letting  her  know  so 
she'd  be  sure  to  have  that  maneater  tucked  safely 
in  his  crib,  the  little  darling.   Goddam  him." 

Danny  chewed  his  cud,  and  I  listened  to  the 
crickets  ticking  in  the  frcsh-cui  grass.  Danny 
went  on: 

"One  day  I  came  doAvn  here  to  mow  as 
usual,  and  I  guess  I  must  of  had  something  on 
my  mind  because  so  help  me  1  clean  forgot  to 
warn  Nita  I  was  coming,  and  wouldn't  you  know 
it  would  be  just  that  one  day  it  had  to  happen? 
I  never  even  see  that  old  \ellow  cat  stalking  the 
starlings  until  the  cutter-bar  was  right  atop  of 
him,  and  then  it  was  too  late."  Danny  looked 
at  me  gravely.  "I'd  always  heard  tell  that  a  cat 
has  nine  lives,  and  that  was  one  time  when  I 
wished  it  had  been  true.  But  that  poor  darned 
cat  was  a  goner  the  minute  the  cutter-bar  went 
into  him,  and  I  had  to  break  the  news  to  Nita 
myself  because  Asa  said  he'd  be  shot  if  he 
Avould." 

"What  happened  then?"  I  asked,  thinking  of 
Nita  Merrit,  big-bosomed,  fierce-eyed  and  vocal, 
mother  of  eight  children  and  an  untold  number 
of  cats. 

Danny  was  silent  a  moment,  then:  "Don't 
know  as  you  ever  heard— you  ain't  been  here  too 
long— but  my  boy  Paul  had  been  going  with 
Nita's  daughter  Ann  Marie  ever  since  they  was 
in  grade  school  together.  It  was  one  of  those 
things  don't  often  happen  in  real  life,  but  we  all 
knew— that  is.  Hatiie  and  I  kncnv.  Asa  and  Nita 
knew,  all  our  friends  knew,  that  those  kids  meant 
everything  to  each  other.  Of  course  they'd  have 
to  have  waited  until  they  was  both  out  of  school, 
but  everybody  understood  how  it  was  going  to  be 
between  them— until  the  day  my  cutter-bar  got 
Nita's  brindled  tom,  and  I  had  to  carry  him  back 
dead  in  my  handkerchief,  and  the  moment  I 
laid  that  defunct  cat  on  her  doorstep,  that  was  it. 
Accident  or  no  accident  didn't  make  no  differ- 
ence to  her.  I'm  telling  you,  if  I'd  sawed  the  legs 
off  Nita  herself,  it  couldn't  have  been  more  ter- 
rible the  way  she  carried  on." 

"And  the  kids?"  I  asked.  'AVhat  happened  to 
them?" 

"Nita  broke  it  up.  She  sent  Ann  Marie  away 
to  live  with  relatives  in  New  Jersey,  and  she 
scared  Hattie  and  me  so  with  her  threats,  we  pre- 
vailed on  Paul  to  try  and  forget  all  about  it." 
Danny  sighed.  "I  don't  know  now  but  what  we 
made  a  big  mistake.    Paul  was  always  the  quiet 


kind  and  he  made  out  like  he  was  taking  the 
whole  thing  sensibly,  but  the  day  Ann  Marie 
went  away,  he  swallowed  the  poison  which  I  al- 
ways kept  in  the  barn,  against  rats,  and  he  like  to 
have  died.  Oh,  he  got  over  it,  and  now  he's  mar- 
ried to  someone  else  and  got  two  kids  and  I  guess 
he  don't  waste  much  time  brooding  over  Ann 
Marie  Merrit.  Though  I  don't  know.  Comes 
over  me  once  in  a  while,  you  feel  strongly 
enough  to  try  to  kill  yourself  over  something,  it 
must  kind  of  stay  ^vith  you  one  way  and  another, 
the  rest  of  your  life." 

AL  L  day  I  could  see  Danny  mowing  the 
lia\.  ;iii(l  then  it  was  finished  and  lay  flat 
and  shining  in  the  sun,  and  he  raked  it  into 
windrows  and  jiitched  it  into  the  haycart  on 
which  he'd  put  okl  automobile  tires,  and  I 
watched  him  working,  a  lean  old  man  in  shabby 
clothes,  old  but  still  lithe,  and  when  the  hay  was 
piled  in  the  cart  the  field  emerged  strange  and 
green  as  in  early  summer,  and  presently  I  saw 
Danny  walking  toward  the  house  carrying  some- 
thing in  his  hand  and  smiling  in  a  pleased  sort 
of  way. 

I  went  down  the  steps  to  meet  him  and  he 
held  out  the  object— a  silver  watch,  stained  and 
tarnished,  but  with  its  glass  intact. 

"Found  this  right  where  I  must  have  dropped 
it,"  he  said.  "Been  calculating,  and  I  figure  it 
was  in  the  fall  of  1940,  just  before  we  got  into 
the  war." 

The  watch  had  stopped  at  12:30  and  the  main- 
spring was  gone,  but  Danny  gazed  at  it  fondly. 
"My  uncle  sentme  that  watch  from  Switzerland 
year  Hattie  and  I  was  married,  and  I  felt  real 
bad  when  I  lost  it.  Hunted  everywhere  for  it, 
and  I  must  have  combed  this  field  inch  by  inch 
at  the  time,  but  never  did  find  it.  Then  today 
when  I  was  lifting  a  pitchfork  of  hay  back  there 
halfAvay  acrost  your  field,  I  see  the  light  hit  some- 
thing and  it  gave  back  a  great  spark,  like  it  was 
trying  to  catch  my  eye— and  there  it  lay  where  it 
been  lying  for  going  on  nineteen  years!" 

"Suppose  you  can  have  it  fixed  so  it  ^vill  run?" 
I  asked,  but  he  shook  his  head. 

"^\'ouIdn't  hardly  be  worth  it.  And  anyway, 
there  will  always  be  one  time  of  day  when  it'll  be 
telling  the  light  time.  Guess  I'd  rather  leave  it 
at   that." 

He  clambered  into  the  cart  and  almost  dis- 
appeared in  the  great  fragrant  mass,  and  I  stood 
and  Avatched  two  seasons  mo\'e  away  down  my 
little  road,  and  I  could  hear  the  starlings,  hun- 
dreds of  them,  feeding  in  the  young,  frail  green 
of  next  year's  grass. 

Hnrjier's  Magazine,  July  1961 


PETER   F.  DRUCKER 


A  PLAN  FOR  REVOLUTION 

IN  LATIN  AMERICA 


From  the  Andes  to  the  Caribbean,  a  new 

generation  of  able  and  angry  young  leaders 

is  battling  against  stupid  and  corrupt 

governments  as  well  as  poverty.  .  .  .  A  new  kind 

of  help  could  insure  victory  on  both  fronts. 

UNDER  ihe  shock  of  the  Cuban  fiasco  last 
April,  Congress  anted  up  the  first  §600- 
million  installment  on  President  Kennedy's  Plan 
for  Latin  America.  This  coming  month  the 
American  Republics  \\ill  meet  in  Uruguay  to 
submit  their  proposals  on  how  to  use  the  money. 
If  the  Kennedy  Plan  works  out— and  the  Cuban 
affair  was  not  the  ideal  send-off— it  will  rival  the 
|13  billion  and  six  years  of  the  Marshall  Plan 
that  restored  Western  Europe. 

But  the  aim  of  the  Kennedy  Plan  is  a  much  more 
ambitious  one.  It  is  not  to  restore,  but  to  build 
something  brand-new:  a  Latin  America  capable 
of  attaining  by  its  own  efforts  both  rapid  eco- 
nomic growth  and  social  justice.  This  would 
mean  a  real,  though  peaceful,  revolution  through- 
out an  entire  continent  of  t^vo  hundred  million 
people.  Therefore  its  success  will  depend  less 
on  American  money  than  on  what  Latin  America 
can  and  will  do  for  herself. 

Money  cannot  buy  the  most  essential  develop- 
ment resource  of  the  Americas:  genuine  patriots, 
free  of  both  the  callous  indifference  of  the  old 
"ruling  classes,"  and  of  the  impassioned  jingoism 
of  the  self-styled  "intellectuals."  Industrializa- 
tion, though  vital,  is  not  enough  by  itself;  unless 
it  is  paralleled  by  major  advances  in  agriculture 
and  public  service,  it  distorts  as  much  as  it  de- 
velops. 

At  the  root  of  the  profound  crisis  of  Latin 
America— of  which  Castro's  Cuba  is  a  symptom 


rather  than  a  cause— is  not  economic  stagnation 
but  exactly  the  opposite:  the  stresses  and  strains 
of  the  most  rapid  economic  growth  anywhere  in 
the  world  today.  The  continuing  demands  for 
faster  and  faster  economic  development  arise 
less  out  of  a  desire  for  a  higher  standard  of  living 
than  as  a  protest  against  age-old  social  injustices, 
injustices  inherited  in  large  part  from  conquista- 
dor and  colonial  viceroy,  if  not  from  Inca  and 
Aztec. 

Because  Latin  America  has  been  growing  so 
fast  economically,  it  presents  a  major  opportu- 
nity to  U.S.  policy.  No  other  part  of  the  underde- 
veloped world  is  so  close  to  the  "take-off  point," 
the  point  at  which  economic  gro^vth  becomes 
self-sustaining.  But  the  very  speed  of  the  advance 
has  created  social  and  political  Avhirlwinds  that 
threaten  to  blow  Latin  America  off  her  shaky 
eighteenth-century  foundations. 

Venezuela,  Peru,  Ecuador— perhaps  even 
Mexico— might  have  gone  "fidelista"  these  last 
twelve  months,  if  it  hadn't  been  for  Fidel  Castro 
himself.  His  strutting,  his  oppression  of  the  mid- 
dle class,  and  his  suppression  of  all  liberties- 
above  all,  his  clumsy  interference  in  other  Latin 
American  countries— lost  him  a  good  many  of  his 
earlier  admirers,  including  even  many  pro-Com- 
munists. But  the  ills  which  lead  to  "fidcJismo" 
are,  of  course,  still  there,  untreated,  let  alone  un- 
cured. 


THE      FASTEST      BOOM 
IN     THE     WORLD 

MOST  of  Latin  America  is,  of  course,  desper- 
ately poor.  Most  of  it  is  "underdeveloped."  But 
the  fact  that  half  the  Latin  American  people 
still  live  as  their  fathers  did  is  much  less  signifi- 
cant than  the  fact  that  the  other  half  have  been 


32 


A     PLAN      FOR      REVOLUTION 


living  in  a  tremendous  industrial  boom  these  last 
ten  or  fifteen  years.  Nowhere  in  the  world  has 
economic  growth  been  faster  than  in  Puerto 
Rico;  in  Mexico  City  and  Monterrey;  in  Cali  and 
Medellin,  the  two  industrial  cities  of  Colombia; 
around  Lima,  Peru;  and  in  Brazil's  "industrial 
triangle"  between  Rio,  Belo  Horizonte,  and  Sao 
Paulo.  In  some  of  these  areas,  growth  rates  of  10 
])er  cent  a  year  and  more  have  been  common- 
place. * 

This  boom  has  j^roduced  a  new  economic 
strength.  Only  a  decade  ago  a  collapse  of  com- 
modity prices  would  have  crushed  every  Latin 
American  economy;  and  all  (excepting  Mexico) 
are  still  dependent  on  the  exjjort  of  one— or  at 
most  two— commotli ties,  such  as  coffee,  petroleum, 
or  copper.  Although  in  the  past  few  years  com- 
modity prices  fell  as  fast  and  almost  as  far  as  they 
did  during  the  depression,  onh  Bolivia's  econ- 
omy broke  down  (and  there  chiefly  because  of 
mismanagement  of  the  nationalized— and  almost 
exhausted— tin  mines).  A  good  many  countries- 
Peru,  Mexico,  Colombia,  and  to  some  degree 
even  coffee-dependent  Brazil— managed  to  keep 
growing.  And  exccj)t  for  those  in  Cuba  that  have 
been  confiscated  by  Castro,  the  manufacturing 
companies  in  Latin  America  that  I  know  of  are 
doing  well. 

Socially,  the  boom  is  creating  a  middle  class. 
No  longer  are  the  rich  getting  richer  and  the 
poor  getting  poorer.  During  the  last  ten  or  fif- 
teen years,  the  biggest  gains  have  been  made  by 
a  new  urban  middle  class  of  skilled  \\'orkers,  small 
businessmen,  clerks,  technicians,  j^rofessionals, 
and  managers.  The  Brazilian  worker,  to  be  sure, 
does  not  drive  to  the  plant  in  an  automobile;  he 
is  lucky  to  get  a  seat  on  an  overcrowded  bus.  Yet 
in  the  ghastly  traffic  jams  that  tie  up  Rio  and  Sao 
Paulo  every  morning  and  evening,  the  million- 
aires' Cadillacs  are  vastly  outnumbered  by  the 
grocers'  battered  Ford  half-trucks  and  the 
mechanics'  Volkswagens.  Nor  do  millionaires  or 
big  landowners  occupy  all  the  t;dl  apartment 
houses  that  are  shooting  up  like  mushrooms  in 
every  Latin  American  city,  from  Monterrey  in  the 
North  to  Santiago  de  Chile  in  the  South. 

Perhaps  the  most  convincing  evidence  of  the 
social  change  is  the  fact  that  the  150,000  Cuban 
refugees,   with   few   exceptions,   are   of   the   new 

*  Only  Argentina  and  Chile— paradoxically  the 
countries  with  the  highest  standard  of  living,  the 
highest  literacy,  and  the  largest  middle  class— have 
not  advan(ecl.  The  ff)nncr  was  so  systematically 
plundered  under  Pcron  that  years  f>f  hard  work  will 
be  needed  to  biiiig  it  back  to  where  it  was  twenty 
years  ago. 


middle  class.  In  some  Latin  Anurican  (oinurics 
the  middle  class  is  already  large  enough  lo  sup- 
port a  number  of  muiu.d  iiu'estment  trusts  hold- 
ing local  securities— something  unimaginable 
thirty  years  ago.  Latin  America  is  the  oidv  ))art 
of  the  world,  other  than  Russia,  wheie  the  luuu- 
ber  of  doctors  is  increasing  lasier  than  the  l>op- 
ulation.  Too  many  Indian  villages  in  Peru  still 
have  no  school  at  all.  But  the  Uiiiversitv  of 
Cuzco,  12,000  feet  uj)  in  the  Ancles,  is  packed 
with  eager  Indian  youngsters  who  come  from 
schools  that  did  not  exist  twenty  years  ago.  Their 
parents  still  live,  illiterate,  in  the  Early  Bronze 
Age. 

And  change  has  been  greatest  in  arens  the 
economist  does  not  count  as  "income"  or  "nut- 
put":  the  widening  of  the  horizon  through  the 
movie,  the  ubiquitous  radio,  and  (iiureasingly) 
the  TV  set;  the  new  mobility  created  bv  dirt 
roads,  trucks,  buses,  and  (increasingly)  airplanes; 
the  ne^v  access  to  education.  These  new  ways  of 
living  have  made  their  greatest  impact  in  the 
poorest  city  shuns  and  in  sharecroppers'  shanties. 

At  the  same  '  time,  a  growing  imbalance 
between  advancing  industry  and  stagnant 
agriculture  has  lured  into  the  cities  masses  of 
the  poorest  and  least  skilled  peasants.  This  new 
proletariat  has  created  a  major  social  problem. 
As  a  result  of  the  new  economic  growth  and 
social  mobility,  social  injustices  hitherto  taken 
for  granted  are  no  longer  bearable.  Old  slogans 
and  even  older  alignments  can  no  longer  produce 
})olitical  leadership  and  power. 

The  Latin  American  industrial  worker,  espe- 
cially in  the  many  small  shops,  is  poorly  equipped 
and  trained,  and  rarely  well  managed.  He  turns 
out  an  average  of  SI, 500  worth  of  goods  a  )ear. 
This  is  no  more  than  a  fifth  of  the  U.S.  figure, 
and  just  about  half  that  of  northern  Italy.  But 
it  is  twice  what  it  was  fifteen  years  ago.  By  con- 
trast, the  Latin  American  farmer  turns  out  only 
S300  worth  of  stuff  a  year— a  little  less  than  he 
produced  fifteen  years  ago. 

The  immediate  economic  result  is  a  growing 
food  shortage.  The  Latin  American,  who  is  much 


Peter  F.  Driicker  has  averaged  more  than  one 
trip  a  year  to  Latin  America  in  the  past  decade.  As 
a  management  consultant  to  American  business,  he 
has  worked  ivith  Latin  American  affiliates  of  U.S. 
companies  and  with  Latin  American  government 
agencies  and  universities.  As  an  admirer  of  pre- 
Inca  and  Inca  civilizations,  he  has  found  his  favorite 
recreation  in  the  mountains  of  Peru.  Mr.  Drucker's 
many  hooks  include  "Landmarks  of  Tomorrow" 
and  "The  New  Society." 


BY     PETER     F.     DRUCKER 


33 


better  supplied  with  manufactured  goods  of  all 
kinds,  is  getting  less  to  eat.  Population  has 
doubled  since  1940.  Food  supply  has  not  kept 
step.  A  good  many  model  farms  and  plantations 
have  proved  that  Latin  American  agriculture  can 
produce  high  yields.  But  on  the  whole,  the  yields 
have  not  improved  for  a  century  and  are  now 
among  the  lowest  in  the  world.  In  every  Latin 
American  country  (except  Mexico  perhaps)  agri- 
cultural stagnation  increasingly  offsets  industrial 
gains,  and  food  deficits  increasingly  threaten  an 
already  precarious  balance  of  payments. 

Yet,  contrary  to  popular  belief,  the  land  is  not 
now  overpopulated.  As  Felipe  Herrera,  the 
Chilean  director  of  the  Inter-American  Develop- 
ment Bank,  puts  it:  Latin  America's  problem 
is  not  "the  distribution  of  land  among  people 
but  of  people  on  the  land."  The  interiors  of 
Ecuador  and  Venezuela  are  empty,  and  so  is  the 
Brazilian  west. 

Although  the  big  city  sucks  in  peasants,  in- 
dustry in  Latin  America  employs  only  one-eighth 
of  the  work  force— less  than  half  the  U.S.  pro- 
portion. But  40  per  cent  of  the  population— 
almost  the  same  ratio  as  in  the  U.S.— lives  in 
cities  of  over  500,000.  Mexico  City  is  as  large 
as  Chicago— around  six  million.  Sao  Paulo,  Rio, 
and  Buenos  Aires  have  around  four  million  each. 
Bogota,  Caracas,  Havana,  Lima,  Montevideo,  and 
Santiago  are  all  well  above  the  million  mark. 
All  these  metropolitan  areas  have  at  least  doubled 
since  World  War  II. 

But  there  is  little  work  for  these  largely  un- 
skilled and  illiterate  millions.  Many  do  not  speak 
the  Spanish  or  Portuguese  of  the  city  but  their 
own  Indian  tongues.  The  inrush  has  been  so 
great  that  it  would  have  overwhelmed  even  much 
richer  cities.  Housing,  water,  schools,  trans- 
portation, and  sewers  are  lacking,  but  one  sees 
radio  aerials  on  orange-crate  and  oil-can  shacks, 
palm-frond  shanties,  and  hillside  caves  which 
ring  the  magnificent  bay  of  Rio  de  Janeiro.  It 
is  small  wonder  that  the  slums  smolder  with 
deep,  sullen  resentment  in  the  shadow  of  gleam- 
ing factories  and  apartment  houses.  And  the 
countryside  also  smolders.  It  is  this  discontent, 
of  course,  to  which  Castro  appealed  in  Cuba, 
as  well  as  in  the  rest  of  the  continent.  The 
revolt  of  the  " carnpesi )ws"— whether  still  on  the 
land  or  in  the  city  slums— is,  in  origin,  a  pop- 
ulist revolt:  against  the  city  and  the  "bankers," 
against  a  stupid  and  corrupt  government  that 
does  nothing  for  the  poor  but  tax  them.  In  this 
mood  of  despair  the  new  proletariat  is  receptive 
to  the  siren  songs  of  the  demagogue.  Today's 
siren  does  not  ^voo  them  merely  with  a  Cross-of- 


Gold  speech.  He  i dies  also  on  secret  police,  guns, 
and  support  from  "big  brother"  in  Moscow. 

Even  the  oldest  Latin  .\merican  hand  sees 
all  this.  What  he  fails  to  see  or  to  under- 
stand are  the  new  men  who  are  the  products  of 
both  economic  advance  and  social  injustice.  Yet 
these  are  the  new  leaders  who  will  decide  which 
way  Latin  America  will  go. 

THE    NEW    MEN 

TE  N  years  ago  the  president  of  a  large 
South  American  business— a  very  gracious, 
well-educated  liberal  of  the  old  school— con- 
gratulated himself  publicly  on  having  quite  a 
few  executives  of  middle-class  origin  in  the  com- 
pany. "Just  imagine,"  he  said,  "the  father  of  our 
chief  engineer,  Pedro  Sanchez,  was  a  mailman  in 
a  small  town!"  Today  not  even  the  worst  moss- 
back  would  comment  on  this  phenomenon.  Social 
mobility  is  invading  the  most  exclusive  sanctu- 
aries of  the  old  order  (such  as  that  citadel  of 
"aristocracy,"  the  Club  Nacional  in  Lima). 

Politics  shows  this  clearly.  Traditionally,  poli- 
tics in  Latin  America  had  long  been  reserved 
for  the  large  landowner,  the  lawyer,  professor- 
journalist,  and  general.  But  Brazil's  last  presi- 
dent, Kubitschek,  was  a  surgeon  and  the  son  of  a 
Czech  immigrant.  The  new  mayor  of  Sao  Paulo, 
Prestes  Maia,  is  an  architect;  and  so  is  the  odds-on 
favorite  in  this  year's  presidential  election  in 
Peru,  Fernando  Belaunde  Terry. 

These  new  and  amazingly  capable  men  (and 
there  are  many  of  them)  are  young  and  they  are 
angry.  iVIost  of  them  came  up  the  hard  way. 
They  know  from  personal  experience  what  life 
is  like  on  the  sidewalk  and  in  the  peon's  shack. 
They  burn  with  hatred  for  the  injustices,  the 
senseless  waste,  the  indignity  and  suffering  in 
which  they  grew  up  and  in  which  ilieir  parents, 
brothers,  and  cousins  still  live. 

They  know  too  that  it  need  not  be  like  this. 
They  have  seen  what  economic  development  can 
do;  and  they  no  longer  are  philosophically  re- 
signed to  their  society.  .\s  a  result,  they  are 
terribly  impatient  with  the  economist,  the 
banker,  the  diplomat,  who  talk  of  j^ayments  bal- 
ances, business  confidence,  and  capital  accumula- 
tion, rather  than  of  people,  their  needs,  and 
their  potentials. 

Because  the  new  men  fuse  economic  develop- 
ment and  social  justice,  they  are  rapidly  winning 
political  leadership.  They  are  backed,  as  a  rule, 
l)y  neither  of  the  two  traditional  power  centers 
—the  military  iind  ihc  jjoliiical  machines.  But 
the  traditional  political  structures,  their  slogans. 


34 


A     PLAN     FOR     REVOLUTION 


and  leaders  are  becoming  obsolete— precisely  be- 
cause, if  "conservative,"  they  stress  only  economic 
development  and,  if  "radical,"  they  stress  only 
social  justice.  But  today  the  people  of  Latin 
America  demand  both.  Even  the  poorest  now 
know  how  other,  more  fortunate  people  live. 
Social  justice  is  no  longer  a  millennial  hope. 
It  is  the  Sears  store  on  the  city's  outskirts  where 
even  Indians  are  served  courteously.  It  is  the 
peon's  son  who  owns  a  chain  of  service  stations, 
buys  a  Fiat,  and  sends  his  boys  to  college.  It  is 
the  eight-story  anny  hospital  where,  rumor  has 
it,  even  a  common  soldier  lies  on  sheets.  As  a 
result,  economic  development  is  measured  by 
the  people— and  by  their  new  leaders— by  what 
it  fails  to  do  rather  than  by  what  it  does.  It  is 
measured  by  the  yardstick  of  social  justice— and 
found  wanting. 


WHERE     WILL     THE     MONEY 
COME     FROM? 

SO  T  H  E  main  job  ahead  in  Latin  America 
is  political— to  make  economic  growth  spur 
social  justice,  and  to  make  the  hunger  for  justice 
hurry  up  the  process  of  growth.  For  even  the 
greatest  economic  success  will  be  wasted  unless 
the  political  and  social  structure  of  the  con- 
tinent is  fundamentally  changed. 

The  economic  prescription  itself  is  fairly  ob- 
vious. Industry  must  be  built  up  fast,  because 
millions  of  people  must  have  jobs  which  only 
industry  can  supply.  Equally  needed  is  a  rapid 
increase  in  farm  output,  to  close  the  food  gap. 
^Ve  know  perfectly  well  how  to  do  both  of  these 
things.  The  money  is  available.  The  difficulties 
in  using  it— in  the  right  places,  at  the  right 
time— will  be  political,  not  economic. 

The  double  job  will  cost,  roughly,  S20  billion 
a  year,  for  the  next  five  years.  At  least  90  per 
cent  of  this  money  will  have  to  come  from  the 
Latin  Americans  themselves.  They  can  find  it, 
if  they  really  try.  It  would  still  be  a  smaller 
share  of  Latin  American  income  than  the  amount 
India— a  much  poorer  country— plows  into  her 
Five-year  Plans.  And  in  the  boom  areas  of  Latin 
.\merica  new  capital  is  being  formed  faster  than 
almost  any  place  else  in  the  world.  The  trouble 
is  that  too  much  of  the  new  capital  is  being 
wasted  in  real-estate  speculation,  and  too  many 
of  the  rich  still  pay  practically  no  taxes 

A  common-sense  and  hard-handed  reform  of 
the  Latin  American  tax  laws  can  do  much  to 
(ure  both  of  these  evils.  (In  Venezuela  it  is 
already  under  way.)  And  until  such  reforms  are 
carried  out,  Latin  America  can  hardly  hope  to 


get  much  public  aid  from  the  United  States. 
How  can  our  taxpayers  be  expected  to  rescue 
these  countries,  so  long  as  their  own  rich  people 
rarely  pay  any  income  tax  at  all? 

The  remaining  10  per  cent— or  about  $2 
billion  a  year— will  have  to  come  from  the  out- 
side. Not  more  than  half  of  this  should  come 
from  the  U.S.  government.  Europe,  Japan,  the 
World  Bank,  private  investors,  and  export  sur- 
pluses, are  perfectly  capable  of  the  rest. 

How  this  money  is  allocated  will  be  a  matter 
of  the  utmost  delicacy  and  importance.  If  private 
investment  flows  to  the  wrong  places,  it  may 
well  do  more  harm  than  good— and  the  same 
thing  is  true  of  money  from  public  agencies. 
Here  are  a  few  basic  facts  which  the  planners 
ought  to  keep  in  mind: 

1.  Any  nation  will  be  uneasy  if  too  large  a 
share  of  its  resources  and  industry  are  controlled 
by  foreigners— as  we  have  learned  in  Cuba,  Can- 
ada, and  Mexico. 

2.  Latin  Americans  are  particularly  sensitive 
about  foreign  ownership  of  their  oil,  electric 
utilities,  telephone  systems,  and  railroads;  and 
because  of  long-continued,  patient  Marxist  prop- 
aganda, millions  of  people  in  the  Southern 
Hemisphere  are  convinced  that  investment  in 
these  fields  by  foreign  companies— "capitalist  im- 
perialists, '  in  the  Marxist  jargon— is  especially 
bad. 

3.  On  the  other  hand,  they  welcome  foreign 
investment  in  manufacturing  and  distribution. 
The  great  majority  of  such  investments  (many 
of  them  from  Europe)  have  proved  mutually  sat- 
isfactory. "Partnership"  enterprises,  in  which 
local  citizens  own  a  considerable  part  of  the 
stock,  have  been  almost  immune  from  political 
attack.  Although  the  "partnership"  device  is 
not  always  feasible,  it  should  at  least  be  con- 
sidered by  anyone  planning  to  invest  in  Latin 
America. 

4.  There  simply  is  not  enough  capital  in  the 
world  to  industrialize  all  of  the  underdeveloped 
countries— African  and  Asian,  as  well  as  Latin 
American— as  rapidly  as  they  would  like.  There- 
fore, every  penny  of  foreign  investment  should 
be  put  in  the  places  where  it  will  do  the  most 
good.  One  way  to  accomplish  this  with  a  min- 
imum of  pain  and  political  uproar  will  be  men- 
tioned in  a  moment. 

5.  Foreign  investment— public  or  private— can 
be  effective  only  in  those  countries  whose  govern- 
ments have  enough  courage  to  do  some  extremely 
unpopular  things;  and  enough  political  strength 
and  ingenuity  to  get  them  accepted  by  public 
opinion. 


BY     PETER     F.     DRUCKER 


35 


For  example,  every  country  in  Latin  America 
now  has  a  crisis  in  fuel,  electric  energy,  and 
transport.  In  Argentina,  admittedly  the  worst 
case,  up  to  one-third  of  the  harvest  is  lost  for 
want  of  locomotives  or  locomotive  fuel.  A  shoe 
factory  in  Rosario  had  to  shut  down  five  out 
of  every  eight  working  hours  last  year,  because 
of  power  failures.  And  in  Brazil,  high  shipping 
costs  have  priced  many  common  commodities- 
paper,  for  instance,  and  edible  oils— out  of  the 
mass  market. 

A  main  reason  for  all  this  is  that  the  in- 
dustries concerned  are  politically  sensitive.  The 
Argentine  government  has  not  yet  dared  to  lay 
off  the  hordes  of  Peron's  political  appointees, 
who  still  hold  about  half  the  railway  jobs.  Be- 
cause it  is  politically  dangerous  to  raise  utility 
rates  anywhere,  they  are  still  pegged  at  pre-infla- 
tion  levels,  in  spite  of  a  ten-  or  twenty-fold  rise 
in  other  prices.  Consequently,  the  utility  com- 
panies (whether  owned  locally  or  by  foreign 
investors)  have  rarely  made  a  nickel  in  the  last 
five  years— and  therefore  they  can't  get  the  capital 
for  new  equipment,  to  meet  a  doubling  of  the 
population  and  a  four-fold  growth  in  demand. 

But  solutions  can  be  found  Avhich  arc  politi- 
cally feasible,  as  Argentina  has  recently  dem- 
onstrated in  its  oil  industry.  Ownership  of  oil 
properties  will  remain  with  the  state,  but  ex- 
ploration and  management  will  be  handled  by 
foreign  companies,  making  a  fair  but  attr.'.ctive 
profit.  In  similar  fashion,  devices  might  he  found 
for  lending  public  money  (perhaps  from  the 
World  Bank)  to  rehabilitate  railroad  beds— some 
of  which  have  had  neither  maintenance  nor 
new  equipment  for  thirty  years— while  private 
capital  is  used  to  purchase  new  cars  and  loco- 
motives. 

Similar  political  courage  will  be  needed  to 
step  up  production  in  agriculture.  AVhat  is 
needed  is  such  familiar  items  as  farm  credit,  rural 
roads,  co-ops,  farm  agents  to  teach  new  methods, 
improved  seed,  fertilizer,  and  power.  Rut  before 
these  can  be  effective,  two  big  political  obsta- 
cles have  to  be  cleared  away: 

A.  Land  reform  is  needed  in  some— though 
by  no  means  all— parts  of  Latin  America.  Espe- 
cially in  the  fertile  central  valley  of  Tlhile  and 
in  the  northwestern  "Bulge"  of  Brazil,  the  big 
feudal  estates  need  to  be  split  up  into  family- 
sized  farms.  In  more  areas,  tiny,  marginal  farms- 
split  up  every  time  they  have  been  handed  down 
from  a  father  to  his  sons  for  many  generations 
—need  to  be  consolidated. 

B.  Some  traditional  crops  have  to  be  aban- 
doned. Coffee  in  central  Brazil  is  sacred,  as  much 


a  way  of  life  as  cotton  was  in  our  pre-Civil  War 
South.  Yet  half  o'  the  coffee  land  has  deterio- 
rated so  badly  that  it  should  be  switched  im- 
mediately into  grains,  livestock,  or  timber.  To 
cite  one  more  instance  out  of  many,  unimjjroved 
corn  has  been  the  traditional  crop  in  southern 
Mexico  since  Aztec  days;  until  it  is  abandoned 
for  more  productive  crops,  no  increase  in  farm 
yields  and  income  is  possible. 

So  far,  however,  no  Mexican  government  has 
dared  tackle  this  problem,  and  no  Brazilian 
politician  has  even  hinted  that  King  Coffee's 
throne  is  shaky.  Meddling  with  land  tenure  or 
traditional  crops  is  always  dangerous,  everywhere 
—as  our  own  politicians  know  only  too  well. 

NEED    FOR    "spectaculars" 

D(^  Z  E  N  S  of  sound  programs  are  being 
worked  on  in  Latin  America— for  housing, 
education,  farm  credit,  or  public  health.  But 
they  take  forever  to  show  results.  Meanwhile 
the  people  perish  for  lack  of  vision.  We  must 
accept  the  fact  that  uniform  development  of  the 
entire  continent  is  not  possible.  The  small  coun- 
tries will  move  only  if  the  big  ones  do  well. 
Hence  development  j)rojects  in  the  small  coun- 
tries are  not  likely  to  be  fruitful.  After  all,  over 
two-thirds  of  Latin  America's  population  lives 
in  four  countries:  Brazil,  Mexico,  .Argentina,  and 
Colombia.  Of  the  others  only  the  three  mineral 
producers,  Venezuela,  Peru,  and  Chile  (ac- 
counting together  for  an  additional  15  per  cent 
of  the  continent's  population),  can  ever  be  eco- 
nomically viable.  Indeed,  in  the  case  of  Chile, 
the  greatest  development  contribution  would 
be  the  long-discussed  Latin  American  Common 
Market  which  would  provide  customers  for 
Chile's  large  steel  capacity. 

Within  the  bigger  countries,  "spectaculars" 
are  needed,  big  projects  which  catch  tlic  peoj)le's 
imagination.  A  lot  of  little  projects  cannot  do 
this.  Economically,  it  is  true,  such  "spectacidars" 
may  be  questionable.  But  so  was  T\''.'\  in  19.84. 
So  also  was  Puerto  Rico's  "Operation  Bootstrap" 
when  it  started  during  World  ^Var  II.  Yet  it  has 
given  this  desperately  poor  island  proportion- 
ately the  liiglicst  industrial  employment  and  the 
highest  labor  income  in  Latin  America. 

Here  are  a  few  "spectaculars"  worth  pon- 
dering: 

•  The  "Bulge"  of  Brazil  might  become  a 
model  farming  region.  Today  it  looks  very  much 
like  our  Souih  around  19.S3:  thirty  million  peo- 
ple living  in  semicolonial  dej:)endence  on  run- 
down, eroded,  and  drought-stricken   land.   Five 


36 


A     PLAN     FOR     REVOLUTION 


lo  eight  years  of  concentrated  effort  could  estab- 
lish there,  for  instance:  one  model  farm  to  every 
five  hundred  or  one  thousand  farmers;  one  decent 
co-op— supplying  marketing,  purchasing,  credit, 
and  technical  advice— for  every  one  to  two  thou- 
sand farms;  primitive  networks  of  rural  roads 
and  rural  power;  one  county  agent  for  every  two 
to  five  thousand  farm  families;  and  finally  five 
hundred  small  plants  processing  local  products 
or  producing  simple  consumer  goods  and  farm 
supplies.  This  takes  hard  work— but  it  is  feasible. 

•  Chile  could  meet  its  oTvn  food  requirements 
in  five  years— without  much  difficulty.  It  has 
land,  the  climate,  even  some  of  the  skills.  What 
is  called  for  is  intelligent  land  reform  Avhich  gives 
the  cidtivator  an  incentive  to  improve  the  land 
plus  roads,  marketing  co-ops,  and  rural  credit. 

In  Chile— and  in  neighboring  Peru  as  well- 
modest  investments  in  fishing  and  fish  processing 
would  yield  a  rapidly  improved  diet.  The  cool 
offshore  waters  are  teeming  with  sea  food,  w^hile 
the  people's  diet  is  desperately  short  of  proteins. 
Or,  we  might  concentrate  in  the  coastal  desert 
of  Peru  all  our  efforts  to  de-salt  sea  ^vater  and 
produce  electricity  in  atomic  reactors.  AVater  is 
so  valuable  to  this  excellent  but  completely  arid 
land  that  atomic  power  and  de-salted  water 
would  be  economical,  even  at  today's  costs.  And 
millions  of  Indians  in  the  Andes  are  desper- 
ate for  land. 

•  And  in  oil-rich  but  job-poor  Venezuela  ^\e 
might  try  a  repetition  of  the  Puerto  Rican  story— 
an  organized  development  effort  through  private 
industry,  aimed  at  doubling  national  income 
and  increasing  factory  jobs  ten-fold  in  a  decade. 

These  are  illustrations  only— and  not  neces 
sarily  the  right  ones.  (Perhaps  I  have  put  too 
much  stress  on  needs;  in  terms  of  opportunity, 
Colombia  might  well  deserve  top  priority.)  But 
the  principle  is  clear:  money,  skill,  and  man- 
power should  be  focused  on  a  few  heroic  tasks 
that  fire  the  imagination  and  show  what  can  be 
done.  They  must  not  be  frittered  away  by  spread- 
ing them  thin  over  the  whole  enormous  area. 

WAITING    FOR    UNCLE 

IX  THE  last  analysis,  Latin  America  will 
develop  as  it  shifts  from  dependence  on  others 
to  dependence  on  itself.  Social  justice  is  not  a 
matter  of  money  but  of  will,  not  a  problem  for 
the  economist  but  a  task  for  the  patriot,  requir- 
ing leadership  and  community  action  rather 
than  investment. 

When  the  preseni  president  of  Brazil, 
Janio     Quadros,     was     mayor     of     Sao     Paulo 


a  few  years  back,  he  transformed  the  city  by 
clearing  slums,  building  roads,  sewers,  water 
mains,  putting  buses  on  the  streets.  And  yet  he 
left  the  place— which  was  bankrupt  when  he  took 
over— debt-free  and  with  a  surplus.  Doria  Felisa 
Rincon  de  Gautier,  the  remarkable  woman  mayor 
of  San  Juan,  Puerto  Rico,  has  ^vroiight  similar 
miracles.  These  f^vo  work  quite  differently— 
Quadros  with  cold,  dedicated  brilliance,  Doiia 
Felisa  as  an  unmistakably  feminine  La  Guardia. 
But  both  have  shown  how  much  can  be  done 
without  waiting  for  outside  help. 

In  Colombia,  the  Coffee  Growers'  Federation  is 
tackling  rural  problems  without  a  cent  of  gov- 
ernment money  or  foreign  aid.  The  farmers 
are  taught  to  reap  more  and  better  coffee  from 
only  a  selected  part  of  their— usually— tiny  hold- 
ings. The  rest  of  their  land  is  put  into  better- 
paying  crops  such  as  bananas,  cacao,  and  oil 
seeds.  Above  all,  the  Federation  is  trying  to 
educate  future  farmers  by  building  elementary 
schools  in  isolated  mountain  regions  and  sup- 
porting a  4-H  Club  program. 

In  neighboring  Venezuela,  the  new  democratic 
government  through  its  land-development  pro- 
gram in  1959  and  f960  made  owner-farmers  out 
of  90,000  former  tenants,  farm  laborers,  and 
ex-farmers— almost  one-tenth  of  the  country's  en- 
tire population.  As  a  result,  Venezuela  no  longer 
needs  to  import  such  major  staples  as  rice, 
corn,  and  cotton.  This  took  money,  to  be  sure; 
but  even  more  important  were  the  opening  of 
new  land  to  cidtivation;  providing  seed,  advice, 
and  intelligent  plans;  building  a  co-operative 
marketing  system. 

There  are  plenty  of  lesser  examples.  In  Peru, 
for  instance,  an  American  priest.  Father  Daniel 
McLellan,  six  years  ago,  founded  the  first  credit 
union  with  a  capital  of  a  himdred  dollars.  It  has 
noA\'  loaned  over  a  million  dollars  without  a 
single  default.  And  five  thousand  of  the  poorest 
Peruvians  have  made  down  payments  on  decent 
homes. 

These  encouraging  situations  are  not,  however, 
typical.  The  present  Peruvian  Congress— consid- 
ered rather  "leftish"— closes  the  door  to  American 
aid  by  refusing  to  adopt  land  and  tax  reforms 
which  are  much  less  radical  than  those  McKin- 
ley's  Republican  Congress  imposed  on  newly- 
annexed  Puerto  Rico  sixty  years  ago.  Progress 
is  slowed  not  only  by  vested  interests  but  by 
heritage  of  a  colonial  past  when  even  the  least 
change  had  to  await  a  decision  by  the  viceroy, 
or  a  distant  king  in  Madrid.  Now  that  there  is 
no  viceroy,  the  tendency  is  to  wait  for  Uncle  Sam. 

For  instance,  a  visiting  Yankee    (a  prominent 


BY     PETER     F.     DRUCKER 


37 


Catholic  layman)  was  recently  harangued  by 
South  America's  most  progressive  Catholic  bishop 
about  his  parishioners'  terrible  housing,  ignor- 
ance, filth,  illiteracy,  and  disease. 

"What  does  the  diocese  do  about  these  things?" 
the  visitor  asked. 

"We  do  anything?"  the  bishop  replied.  "My 
question  is:  What  are  you  in  New  York  and 
Washington  going  to  do  about  our  conditions 
here?" 

Fortunately  all  over  Latin  America  the  old 
crust  of  colonial  custom  and  inertia  is  being 
cracked  by  younger  leaders  who  don't  know  that 
impatience  is  impolite.  But  for  development  to 
be  fast  and  effective— and,  above  all,  for  it  to 
come  in  freedom  rather  than  in  totalitarian 
tyranny— the  new  men  must  persuade  the  Latin 
American  to  ask:  What  can  I  do?  rather  than: 
What  do  I  need? 

NOT    TOO    MUCH 

WHAT  could  and  should  the  United 
States  do  in  and  for  Latin  America? 
Economically,  not  too  much.  But  politically, 
we  might  make  all  the  difference.  Latin  America 
will  be  expensive  for  the  American  taxpayer. 
But  it  will  cost  much  more  if  it  collapses  into 
revolution  and  dictatorship  than  if  it  grows  to 
stability  and  prosperity.  Substantial  funds  should 
be  committed  for  five  or  ten  years  for  a  develop- 
ment program,  particularly  for  the  "spectaculars." 
Small  sums  should  be  invested  as  seed  money  in 
many  ventures  like  rural  co-ops,  savings-and-loan 
associations,  and  railroad  rolling  stock.  Quick 
financial  blood  transfusions  will  continue  to  be 
needed  in  acute  emergencies— such  as  a  sharp 
sudden  drop  in  the  price  of  a  chief  export  staple, 
the  "austerity  crisis"  that  always  occurs  during 
a  fight  against  inflation,  or  a  major  natural  catas- 
trophe such  as  the  Chilean  earthquake  last  year. 
Latin  America  will  also  continue  to  need  U.S. 
government  guarantees  for  export  credits. 

As  noted  earlier,  the  total  burden  on  our  gov- 
ernment will  come  to  roughly  a  billion  dollars 
a  year— but  the  actual  outflow  of  cash  need  not  be 
anything  like  that  big.  Surplus  food  will  account 
for  a  good  part,  while  much  of  the  rest  will  flow 
back  through  the  purchase  of  American  ma- 
chinery and  other  goods. 

We  must  also  provide  something  scarcer  than 
money:  trained  people.  Illiteracy  in  Latin 
America  is  due  not  so  much  to  lack  of  school- 
houses  as  to  lack  of  teachers.  J.  P.  Grace  recently 
proposed  that  the  U.S.  train  two  thousand  Latin 
Americans  a  year  to  teach  in  elementary  schools. 


This  would  cost  around  $6  million  annually. 
But  it  might  double  the  literacy  rate  in  rural 
areas  within  ten  years.  A  modest  training  pro- 
gram for  agricultural  extension  teachers  might 
have   an   even  greater   impact. 

Still  scarcer  than  teachers  are  capable  man- 
agers for  business,  irrigation  districts,  school- 
construction  programs,  co-operatives.  One  way 
to  provide  them  is  through  a  "management  con- 
tract" with  a  foreign  business,  university,  or 
labor  union  (under  which  foreigners  manage 
while  ownership  remains  in  the  country).  This  is 
how,  for  instance,  Brazil's  growing  steel  industry 
was  developed.  A  management  contract  is  not 
philanthropy.  The  faster  the  foreign  contractor 
works  himself  out  of  a  job  by  training  his  own 
successors,  the  better  it  should  pay.  Such  con- 
tracts could  offer  attractive  opportunities  to 
some  of  our  large  corporations  and  make  it 
profitable  for  them  to  hire  and  train  capable 
young  men.  Three  years  of  running  a  school- 
construction  program  in  the  Andes  might  do 
more  to  make  a  top-flight  manager  out  of  a 
young  engineer  than  any  number  of  courses  in 
advanced  management. 

HOW  TO  INTERFERE 
PAINLESSLY 

TH  E  traditional  tools  of  "foreign  aid"— 
money  and  trained  men— will  never  do  the 
job  until  Latin  Americans  face  up  to  the  tough 
things  which  they  alone  can  do:  collect  taxes 
from  the  rich  and  clean  out  the  sinecure  jobs 
in  the  swollen  government  services;  push  through 
land  reform  and  cheap  mass  housing;  stop  sub- 
sidizing the  wrong  crops;  get  rid  of  the  petti- 
fogging regulations  that  now  separate  the  indi- 
vidual states  of  Brazil  by  mountains  of  red  tape; 
enforce  the  factory  and  mining-inspection  laws 
already  on  the  statute  books;  and  say  "no"  to  the 
blackmail  of  the  generals  who  habitually  threaten 
to  overthrow  a  regime  unless  they  get  a  few 
more  unneeded  jet  planes,  tanks,  or  destroyers. 
Only  the  Latin  Americans  can  mobilize  their 
own  trained  manpower,  now  often  pitifully  im- 
der-used.  They  have  men  as  good  as  any  we  can 
muster:  Argentina's  Raul  Prebisch,  Peru's 
Romulo  Ferrero,  Chile's  Felipe  Herrera,  or  the 
West  Indian  Arthur  W.  Lewis,  the  greatest 
authority  on  rural  development  in  the  tropics. 
Other  experts  (and  many  younger  men)  have 
been  boxed  in  by  the  pettiness  of  local  politics; 
by  the  snobbery  of  local  society;  or  simply  by  the 
conviction  of  their  elders  that  everything  worth- 
while comes  from  Paris  or  a  German  university. 


38 


A     PLAN     FOR     REVOLUTION 


So  our  greatest  contribution  to  the  develop- 
ment of  Latin  America  will  be  to  make  high 
demands,  with  teeth  in  them.  This,  of  course,  is 
"interference."  But  giving  or  investing  money 
in  an  underdeveloped  country  is  interference 
anyhow— the  only  question  is:  To  what  end?  We 
must  make  sure  that  we  interfere  on  the  side  of 
Latin  America's  future. 

How  can  we  do  this  without  arousing  insuper- 
able resentment  and  resistance? 

The  answer,  I  think,  lies  in  a  great  (though 
almost  unknown)  American  invention.  We  in- 
vented it  as  part  of  the  Marshall  Plan,  which 
never  could  have  worked  without  it.  It  was  the 
European  Economic  Organization— an  executive 
committee,  with  members  from  all  the  countries 
involved,  which  made  the  hard,  unpleasant  de- 
cisions about  the  rebuilding  of  Europe.  It  worked 
hand  in  hand  with  American  experts,  but  the 
decisions  were  made— and  enforced— by  the 
Europeans  themselves. 

What  we  need  now  is  a  similar  Inter-American 
Economic  Organization,  which  will  work  out 
over-all  plans  for  developing  the  whole  conti- 
nent. It  must  set  priorities,  and  see  that  efforts 
are  concentrated  on  major  programs.  It  must 
decide  (consulting  with  U.S.  experts)  where  dol- 
lars and  trained  men  can  be  used  best. 

No  one  nation  can  do  this  for  itself,  and  we 
alone  cannot  do  it,  either.  If  the  United  States 
were  to  deny  an  airport  to,  say,  Honduras,  be- 
cause the  money  can  be  better  spent  on  a  road 
in  Brazil,  every  Honduran  politician  would 
scream  his  head  off.  Or  if  we  insisted  on  land 
reform  in  El  Salvador,  under  threat  of  with- 
holding aid,  we  would  instantly  be  accused  of 
"imperialist  interference."  (On  the  other  hand, 
if  we  demand  nothing,  we  shall  be  blackmailed 
into  supporting  every  unpopular  and  obsolete 
government  which  threatens  to  send  a  trade  mis- 
sion to  Moscow.) 

But  if  these  same  things  are  demanded  by  a 
non-national  agency,  speaking  for  the  whole 
Latin  American  community,  in  the  name  of  a 
common  development  goal,  Honduras  and  El 
Salvador  can  yield  gracefully.  (Perhaps  even 
gratefully.)  Only  an  organization  of  this  kind 
can  enlist  the  ablest  men  and  women  of  the  con- 
tinent, for  service  wherever  they  are  needed.  Only 
such  an  organization  can  arouse  the  enthusiasm, 
and  the  sense  of  unified  purpose,  which  will 
make  the  Kennedy  Plan  workable. 

To  avoid  the  worst  mistake  of  the  Marshall 
Plan  it  must  also  exact  at  the  outset  a  commit- 
ment from  every  country  to  start  giving  develop- 
ment aid  to  others  as  soon  as  it  is  over  the  first 


hurdles.  We  must  never  again  be  forced  to  beg 
for  crumbs  off  the  groaning  tables  of  countries 
we  saved  only  a  few  years  earlier. 

A  common  Inter-American  Organization  could, 
finally,  establish  stirring  goals— for  instance,  to 
double,  within  a  decade,  Latin  America's  literacy 
rate,  its  food  supply,  and  national  income.  And 
it  could  deliver. 

With  double  its  literacy  and  its  food  supply, 
Latin  America  would  still  not  be  overeducated 
or  overfed.  After  doubling  incomes,  the  average 
per  family  would  still  be  below  $1,000  a  year 
whereas  even  in  Puerto  Rico  it  is  now  $1,700. 
And  there  would  be  plenty  of  other  troubles  still 
ahead,  particularly  in  the  small  Central  American 
Republics,  which  will  grow  more  painful  as  eco- 
nomic expectations  rise.  But  only  in  this  fashion 
can  Latin  America  become  capable  of  soaring 
higher  under  its  own  power— self-confident  and 
truly  independent. 

And  this,  after  all,  is  the  only  goal  U.S.  policy 
can  hope  to  attain.  "To  keep  out  Communism" 
—our  negative  objective  in  the  last  decade— can 
do  no  more  than  keep  smoldering  fires  from 
becoming  rampant.  To  bring  about  regimes  sub- 
servient to  us— which  is  how  Latin  America  in- 
terpreted the  Dulles  policy— cannot  work:  Latin 
America  has  progressed  too  far  for  that.  And 
there  is  no  point  in  our  playing  Lady  Bountiful, 
in  the  hope  of  being  loved  in  return. 

Our  true  job  is  to  build  a  partnership  between 
the  United  States  and  the  new  leaders  of  Latin 
America,  the  young,  educated  men  with  energy 
and  ambition  who  no  longer  take  "manana"  for 
an  answer.  They  know  themselves  what  needs 
doing.  Our  role  is  to  help  them  create  the  grow- 
ing, strong,  and  truly  independent  Latin  America 
they  rightly  believe  to  be  within  reach. 

The  .I^GOO-million  appropriation  for  Latin 
America  by  the  U.S.  Congress  is  a  first  step.  So 
are  the  development  plans  now  being  worked  out 
by  every  Latin  American  government,  each  of 
which  is  naturally  trying  to  get  as  much  for  it- 
self as  it  can.  The  key  task,  however,  is  still  to 
be  tackled:  the  creating  of  a  new  kind  of  political 
leadership  in  this  country  as  well  as  in  Latin 
America.  Neither  the  American  people  nor  the 
Latins  yet  understand  that  this  is  not  just  an- 
other "aid"  program  . .  .  that  it  is  a  long  first  step 
beyond  passive  "containment"  of  the  revolution- 
ary forces  in  the  world  today  .  .  .  that  the  purpose 
of  aid  is  not  primarily  to  create  wealth,  but  to 
create  justice,  vision,  and  commitment  to  ac- 
tion .  .  .  and  that  the  Kennedy  Plan  is  our  first— 
and  if  it  fails,  perhaps  our  last— entry  as  active 
contenders  into  "competitive  co-existence." 


Harper's  Magazine,  July  1V61 


New  York  Is  Different 


MARION    K.    SANDERS 

Any  resemblance  between  the  politicians  in 

this  story  and  any  actual  persons  (living  or  dead 

from,  the  neck  up)  is  strictly  intentional. 

THIS  is  a  Democratic  town,  you  got 
nothing  to  worry  about,"  Ernie  said. 
He  is  a  sawed-off  little  guy  with  a  droopy  mus- 
tache who  does  not  look  at  all  like  one  of  the 
smartest  District  Leaders  in  New  York.  He  lit  a 
cigarette  and  passed  the  pack  to  Mr.  Kenneth  B. 
Dinsmore— a  six-foot-three  hunk  of  crew-cut  who 
was  already  smoking  a  pipe. 

Ernie  is  always  edgy  in  Mayoralty  years  and 
a  late  primary  is  the  worst.  Anyone  who  wants 
to  can  file  a  petition,  and  we  may  not  be  sure 
who  the  candidates  are  until  a  lot  of  Democrats 
knock  each  other  out  on  September  7.  Then 
there  are  only  two  months  left  to  mend  fences 
before  Election  Day.  Of  course  we  will  win,  but 
too  many  Republicans  are  going  around  with  big 
grins  on  their  faces.  Like  Governor  Nelson 
Rockefeller  who  still  has  his  eye  on  the  White 


House.  The  Administration  in  Washington 
worries  about  the  situation  in  New  York  almost 
as  much  as  Laos.  Instead  of  the  CIA  they  have 
sent  us  Mr.  Dinsmore  who  likes  to  be  called  Hal. 
He  went  to  school  with  Bobby  Kennedy  or 
maybe  Teddy  and  is  the  new  nonpolitical  type 
of  candidate  who  has  never  run  for  anything. 
We  are  supposed  to  put  him  on  our  ticket  maybe 
for  Comptroller  or  Council  President,  depending 
on  who  gets  dumped  or  pulls  out.  No  matter 
what  they  say  now,  anyone  can  change  his  mind 
about  running  up  to  August  10,  which  is  the  last 
day  for  declining  nominations  and  m-aking  sub- 
stitutions. Until  then  we  will  carry  Mr.  Dins- 
more as  a  spare  part,  if  he  goes  for  the  idea 
which  we  will  have  to  sell  him. 

This  is  why  Ernie  Glickman  and  I  were  holed 
up  in  a  bedroom-and-parlor  suite  at  the  Biltmore 
with  Hal  and  his  wife  Carol.  She  is  a  Dallas 
girl  whose  Daddy  is  very  rich  even  for  Texas.  I 
am  Teresa  Rovizzi.  My  friends  call  me  Tess 
and  I  was  there  more  or  less  as  Ernie's  cheering 
section. 

"It  is  a  rare  privilege,  Hal,  and  a  high  honor," 
Ernie  said,  "that  a  man  of  your  caliber  and 
distinguished  record  has  decided  to  enter  the 
political  arena  in  our  great  city  at  this  time." 


40 


NEW     YORK     IS     DIFFERENT 


"Decided  is  perhaps  too  strong  a  word.  I  am 
exploring,"  Hal  answered,  tapping  his  pipe  on 
an  ash  tray  in  an  Ivy  League  sort  of  way.  He  was 
in  the  Treasury  Department  under  Truman  and 
now  works  for  a  Wall  Street  law  firm  whose 
senior  partners  were  in  the  McKinley  Cabinet. 
He  is  the  kind  of  candidate  we  would  usually 
run  for  Congress  in  a  solid  Republican  district. 
After  he  loses  he  is  made  an  Honorary  Commis- 
sioner and  can  ride  out  in  the  harbor  on  tug- 
boats to  receive  Royalty.  He  is  not  the  type  the 
Boys   want   hanging  around   City   Hall. 

Ernie  is  not  used  to  shopping  around  for  can- 
didates. Generally  he  gets  the  word  from  the 
Hall  and  gives  the  nod  to  one  of  his  boys  and 
has  some  posters  printed  up  and  that  is  that. 
He  has  had  very  little  practice  giving  sales  talks 
to  someone  like  Hal,  who  is  not  much  of  a  Demo- 
crat and  has  only  lived  in  New  York  lor  ten 
years  and  is  an  Episcopalian.  Of  course  White 
Protestants  are  all  right.  But  there  is  no  such 
bloc  of  votes  in  New  York.  So  when  you  put  one 
on  your  slate  you  still  have  all  the  headaches  of 
balancing  out  your  ticket. 

"I  am  somewhat  staggered  by  the  problems  of 
this  great  urban  complex,"  Hal  said.  "It  is  a 
palace  and  a  jungle  where  only  the  rich  and  the 
destitute  can  survive." 

"We  are  for  Middle  Income  Housing.  Also 
for  Neighborhood  Renewal  and  more  State  Aid 
for  Schools,"  Ernie  snapped  back. 

"But  there  is  vast  wealth  right  here,"  Hal 
went  on.  "Municipal  waste  and  corruption  are 
bleeding  the  city  white.  Stanley  told  me  at  din- 
ner last  night  that  we  could  save  a  hundred  mil- 
lion dollars  a  year  if  we  kicked  out  all  the  city  job 
holders  who  are  not  doing  any  work." 

Stanley  is  Stanley  Isaacs.  He  is  the  only  Re- 
publican on  the  City  Council  and  a  very  peculiar 
person  for  a  Democratic  candidate  to  be  having 
dinner  with. 

"We  have  a  very  fine  Code  of  Ethics.  The 
Mayor  will  not  stand  for  any  Conflict  of  Inter- 
est," Ernie  said.  I  forget  what  payroll  he  is  on 
but  he  does  not  have  any  financial  problems. 
"Tess,  get  coffee,"  he  ordered. 


Marion  K.  Sanders,  who  ran  for  Congress  in 
Rockland  County  and  is  the  author  of  "The  Lady 
and  the  Vote,"  has  inhaled  the  pungent  aroma  of 
New  York  politics  both  as  a  candidate  and  as  a 
reporter.  She  is  an  editor  of  this  magazine  and  a 
frequent  contributor;  her  articles  include  the  con- 
troversial "Social  Work:  A  Profession  Chasing  Its 
Tail"  and.  "A  Proposition  for  Women." 


I  called  room  service.  Sometimes  my  political 
career  seems  like  one  long  coffee  break.  When 
I  was  a  kid  in  Brooklyn  I  toted  cartons  to  the 
polls  every  Primary  and  Election  Day.  That  was 
before  1933  when  we  got  a  Fusion  Administra- 
tion, which  is  a  Nonpartisan  Coalition  of  Better 
Elements  who  do  not  want  to  stay  in  politics  too 
long.  For  the  next  twelve  years  Mayor  La 
Guardia  did  not  need  my  Daddy's  services  to 
inspect  holes  made  in  our  streets  by  the  Con- 
solidated Edison  Company.  Daddy  took  a  job 
at  the  A  &  P  which  left  him  very  little  time  for 
his  work  as  Precinct  Captain.  I  dug  into  the  old 
schoolbooks  and  got  myself  admitted  to  Hunter 
College.  Brooklyn  people  are  very  patriotic,  so 
Daddy  did  not  like  the  idea  of  a  college  in  Man- 
hattan. However,  he  no  longer  had  any  jobs  to 
give  out  even  to  his  own  daughter,  so  he  said 
okay,  maybe  it  would  be  a  broadening  experi- 
ence. It  was.  At  Hunter,  many  of  the  faculty 
had  gone  to  Barnard  or  even  Vassar.  That  is  how 
I  became  bilingual  and  can  speak  both  Park 
Avenue  and  Flatbush,  which  is  very  handy  in 
politics.  The  boys  use  me  as  a  kind  of  Simul- 
taneous Translator  w^th  volunteers  in  campaigns. 

"We  gotta  let  them  know  you're  in  this  race, 
Hal,"  Ernie  said.  "We  need  a  good  catchy 
slogan." 

"To  project  the  right  image,"  I  added. 

"Something  direct  and  hard-hitting,"  Hal  pro- 
posed. "Clean  out  the  Grafters— Clean  up  the 
City.  We  used  that  idea  in  Philadelphia  the 
first  time  Clark  and  Dilworth  ran." 

"This,"  said  Ernie  sourly,  "ain't  Philadelphia." 

TH  E  Dinsmores  live  in  a  duplex  with  a 
gorgeous  view  of  the  East  River  but  his 
family  are  what  is  called  Main  Line.  So  he  keeps 
forgetting  that  Clark  and  Dilworth  ran  against 
the  Entrenched  Republican  Machine.  We  are 
the  Big  Bad  Ins  with  a  two-term  Mayor  who  is 
called  honest  but  weak  by  his  best  friends. 

Bob  Wagner  does  not  like  to  slap  people 
down.  So  he  gets  pushed  around.  By  Carmine 
DeSapio,  the  leader  of  Tammany  Hall.  By  Slate 
Investigating  Commissions.  By  beatniks  ^vho 
want  to  folk-sing  in  Washington  Square  Park. 
By  Robert  Moses,  who  has  been  Commissioner 
of  almost  everything  including  housing  which  he 
is  not  very  good  at.  Wagner  believes  in  letting 
things  blow  over,  only  instead  they  seem  to 
blow  up. 

However  we  want  him  to  run  lor  a  third  term. 
He  is  a  New  York  sort  of  Mayor  and  as  Joe 
Sharkey,  the  Leader  of  Brooklyn  put  it,  "You 
can't  beat  something  with  nothing."   Nothing  is 


BY     MARION     K.     SANDERS 


41 


what  you  have  if  you  cannot  retool  an  incum- 
bent in  this  City.  Other  places  seem  to  be  full  of 
Distinguished  Democrats  who  could  run  for 
Mayor.  But  our  New  York  Congressmen  and 
other  officeholders  are  mostly  from  safe  districts 
and  do  not  need  to  be  famous  to  be  elected.  The 
only  Democrats  who  get  their  faces  in  the  papers 
very  much  are  Insurgents.  But 
all  of  them  want  to  run  for  every- 
thing or  nothing  and  cannot 
agree  on  candidates.  Maybe  they 
will  fall  for  a  NeAv  Face  like 
Hal's.  That  is  what  we  hope  will 
happen  at  our  Campaign  KickofI 
next  week,  a  Ladies'  Luncheon. 

"I  have  been  thinking  about 
the  luncheon,"  Hal  said.  "I  will 
pay  tribute  to  the  many  ethnic 
groups  that  have  contributed  so 
much  to  the  culture  and  progress 
of  this  great  heterogeneous 
metropolis." 

"He  will  work  with  All  Ele- 
ments in  our  Party,"  I  inter- 
preted. 

"Good,"  Ernie  said.    "Be  sure 
Mrs.  O'Houlihan  gets  to  take  a 
bow."  Her  husband  is  the  Leader  of  the  Dennis 
P.   O'Houlihan   Club  on   the   Upper  East  Side. 

"Why  build  up  that  old  hack?"  Hal  demanded. 
"I  hear  their  club  didn't  move  a  muscle  for 
Stevenson  or  Kennedy." 

"Dennie  could  hurt  us  bad,"  Ernie  said.  "Lots 
of  Irish  in   that  district." 

"She  is  a  nice  old  biddy,"  I  added  soothingly. 

Hal  was  staring  out  of  the  window  at  the  cars 
and  taxis  backed  up  bumper  to  bumper  on 
Madison  Avenue.  The  sidewalk  was  blocked 
with  the  scaffolding  of  a  new  office  building. 

"Traffic  and  real  estate  speculators  are  stran- 
gling this  city,"  he  said.  "I  shall  make  a  blister- 
ing statement  on  the  transportation  mess  and 
urban  planning." 

"Transit  is  always  a  good  issue,"  Ernie  an- 
swered, "if  you  promise  not  to  raise  the  subway 
fare.  But  you  better  lay  off  real  estate.  The 
contractors  take  whole  tables  at  County 
Dinners." 

"Let's  go  over  the  luncheon  Dais,"  I  suggested. 
"The  seating  plan  is  more  important  than  the 
speeches." 

Carol  Dinsmore  perked  up.  A  luncheon  was 
something  she  could  really  come  to  grips  with. 
I  could  see  she  was  starting  to  worry  about 
whether  to  wear  a  hat  and  if  so  should  it  be 
a   Jackie   pillbox   or   something   more    Neiman- 


Marcus.    "Wear  the  flowered  one,"   I   told  her, 
"and  that  divine  white  raw-silk  sheath." 

"But  it's  so  sooty  here,"  she  protested  in 
her  weird  Texas  drawl  which  I  have  not  quite 
tuned  in  on  yet. 

"Don't  forget  Nc\\'  York  is  a  Summer  Festival," 
I  said.  Someone  dreamed  up  this  corny  slogan  to 
attract  visitors.  If  you  have  ever 
tried  to  get  into  Schrafft's  for 
hnich  or  even  21,  you  know  that 
we  need  a  slogan  to  keep  people 
away.  Sometimes  I  wonder,  if 
New  York  is  so  terrible,  why 
does  everybody  want  to  come 
here? 

"Will  Mrs.  Roosevelt  be 
there?"  Carol  chirped.  "I  sure 
would  be  thrilled  to  meet  her." 
"You  will  sit  right  next  to 
her,"  I  promised.  Of  course  I 
was  not  absolutely  sure  because 
right  now  you  cannot  tell  which 
Democrats  are  speaking  to  each 
other.  At  a  time  like  this  a 
Ladies'  Luncheon  is  very  help- 
ful. No  matter  how  they  feel 
about  Cuba  or  taxes  or  remedial 
reading,  all  women  like  to  doll  up  and  go  to  the 
Park  Lane.  Mrs.  R.  is  not  the  dressy  type  but  she 
is  very  strong  for  Women  in  Politics.  Also  you  are 
working  with  symbols  instead  of  the  real  thing, 
so— as  the  psychiatrists  say— tensions  are  lower. 
For  instance  Mrs.  R.  would  not  want  to  shake 
hands  this  summer  with  Mr.  DeSapio  or  Mr. 
Sharkey.  But  she  would  not  mind  sipping  a 
glass  of  sherry  with  their  wives,  who  are  very 
ladylike  and  never  discuss  politics.  Ladies  do 
not  listen  too  much  to  the  speeches  at  luncheons 
but  they  all  know  who  is  sitting  on  the  Dais 
and  tell  their  husbands.  So  I  had  to  get  the  Dais 
problem  settled.  I  slajiped  my  yellow  pad  on  the 
coffee  table  and  Carol  got  all  ready  to  start  writing 
place  cards.  Only  I  had  not  yet  put  down  any 
names,  just  a  check  list  like  this: 

3  Reverends 
Party  Brass 
Money  Bags 
Organization— Regular 
Organization- Reform 
Organization  Insurgents 
Insurgent  Insurgents 
Harlem 
Mrs.  R. 
Dolly  Schiff 

"The  Father  was  from  St.  Patrick's  last  year," 
Ernie  said.  "So  we  will  have  one  of  those  Italian 


42  NEW     YORK     IS     DIFFERENT 


priests  from  your  parish,  Tess.  And  an  Irish 
tenor  can  do  the  National  Anthem." 

I  wrote  down  some  names  while  Hal  looked 
over  my  shoulder  studying  my  notes  as  if  they 
were  the  Dead  Sea  Scrolls. 

"This  intra-party  struggle  is  very  perplexing," 
he  said.  "I  need  to  get  the  feel  at  the  grass  roots. 
Could  I  meet  some  of  the  rank  and  file  at  your 
club,  Ernie?" 

"Why  sure,"  Ernie  said.  "Tuesday  is  Club 
Night.  We  are  very  informal." 

ERNIE  runs  what  is  called  an  Old  Line 
Club.  It  is  mostly  a  place  to  play  poker  and 
pinochle.  Tuesdays  the  leader  is  there  to  see 
people  who  have  problems  about  jobs  or  con- 
tracts or  court  cases. 

"I  would  love  to  come  too.  May  I?"  Carol 
asked.  "I  want  to  be  real  active  in  politics  when 
Hal  is  running." 

Ernie  scowled.  Women  do  not  go  to  Old  Line 
Clubs  except  maybe  a  cleaning  lady  with  a 
large  family  of  voting  age  and  relaxed  ideas 
about  dust  and  cigar  butts. 

"The  Lexington  Club  is  much  more  interest- 
ing," I  suggested.  "They  go  in  for  issues  and 
women.  Also  they  are  always  for  Stevenson  no 
matter  who  is  running,  so  you  will  learn  all  about 
the  UN." 

The  Lexingtons  believe  in  Party  democracy 
and  other  Reform  ideas.  In  1954  their  leaders 
won  a  primary  so  now  they  have  a  vote  in 
Tammany  Hall  which  makes  them  an  Organiza- 
tion Reform  Club.  Carmine  DeSapio  was  very 
friendly  with  the  Lexingtons  until  our  State 
Convention  in  1958.  Governor  Harriman  wanted 
Tom  Finletter  to  run  for  U.S.  Senate.  But  De- 
Sapio picked  District  Attorney  Frank  Hogan. 
He  lost  to  the  Republican  candidate.  Senator 
Keating.  Rockefeller  swamped  Harriman.  In  most 
other  states  Democrats  won  big.  Finletter  belongs 
to  the  Lexington  Club.  So  do  Mrs.  Roosevelt 
and  Senator  Lehman.  They  said  we  lost  because 
of  the  Image  of  Bossism  and  DeSapio  must  go. 

"I  have  many  friends  in  the  Lexington  Club," 
Hal  said.  "They  have  asked  me  for  a  donation  to 
the  Committee  for  Democratic  Voters.  I  would 
like  to  get  your  slant  on  that." 

I  hoped  that  Ernie  would  count  ten  before 
answering.  Senator  Lehman  and  Mrs.  R.  and 
Finletter  started  this  committee  which  the  papers 
call  the  CDV.  They  are  going  to  clean  up  the 
Democratic  party  by  getting  rid  of  the  Image 
of  Bossism.  They  have  raised  a  lot  of  money 
from  people  who  think  DeSapio  looks  like  a 
fugitive  from  the  Untouchables. 


"These  self-styled  liberals  are  wrecking  our 
party,"  Ernie  answered.  The  way  he  says  "self- 
styled"  it  sounds  like  perjury. 

"DeSapio  has  to  wear  dark  glasses  because 
he  has  eye  trouble.  Is  this  a  crime?  What  other 
Tammany  Leader  ever  gave  lectures  at  New 
York  University?  And  do  not  forget—"  he  shook 
a  finger  at  Carol  and  me—  "he  changed  the 
name  of  Co-Leaders  to  Leaders  Female." 

Some  of  the  girls  got  a  big  charge  out  of 
this.  But  to  me  it  sounds  like  a  sign  in  a  zoo. 
I  would  be  more  thrilled  if  the  Leaders-Male 
would  start  ordering  their  own  coffee. 

"As  I  understand  it,"  Hal  said,  "the  battle 
against  DeSapio  has  become  a  rallying  point 
for  Reform.  It  has  brought  a  surge  of  new  blood 
into  the  Party  Organization." 

THIS  is  what  happened  in  1959,  in  Man- 
hattan. Insurgents  popped  up  in  all  the 
thirty-three  districts  and  ran  for  leader  against 
The  Image  of  Bossism.  But  the  Boss— DeSapio— 
also  put  up  his  own  Insurgents  to  run  against 
some  Regulars— like  the  Lexingtons— who  were 
no  longer  friendly  with  him.  The  CDV  prom- 
ised to  help  whoever  was  against  the  Image  of 
Bossism.  But  all  this  New  Blood  gave  the  CDV 
a  very  hard  time.  For  instance,  there  might  be 
three  Insurgents  running  against  each  other  in 
the  10th  A.D.  South.  Who  should  get  the  CDV 
endorsement  and— more  important— money?  The 
CDV  had  never  heard  of  most  of  these  people 
and  was  not  quite  sure  where  the  10th  A.D, 
South  was.  When  you  are  handing  out  cash  and 
endorsements  you  need  a  Boss.  The  CDV  is 
against  bosses  but  they  have  Senator  Lehman 
who  has  been  elected  to  high  office.  However, 
he  is  quite  old  and  keeps  going  to  Palm  Springs. 
DeSapio  is  not  old  and  stays  in  the  Biltmore 
most  of  the  time. 

"Why  is  it,"  Hal  asked,  "that  the  Reform 
Groups  have  not  yet  agreed  on  a  candidate  of 
their  own  for  Mayor?" 

"They  have  very  democratic  procedures  about 
candidates  which  may  take  all  summer,"  I  ex- 
jjlained.  "Some  of  them  like  Wagner  and  some 
don't  but  hardly  any  of  them  like  each  other." 

The  Insurgents  who  lost  in  the  '59  primary 
are  now  mad  at  the  CDV  as  well  as  DeSajiio.  So 
they  are  Insurgent  Insurgents.  Some  of  them 
might  even  flip  for  Fusion  which  only  a  very 
mixed-up  Democrat  would  do  in  this  town. 

"1  understand,"  Hal  said,  "that  there  is  still 
a  good  possibility  of  a  Fusion  Movement.  I 
hear  that  the  Liberal  Republicans  and  the  Lib- 
eral   Party    are    sounding    out    an    Independent 


BY     MARION     K.     SANDERS 


43 


Democrat  to  run  for  Mayor."  He  reads  the 
Herald-Tribune  at  breakfast,  a  fiabit  we  must 
break  him  of. 

"Let  them  yack,"  Ernie  said.  "Fusion  is  just 
another  name  for  Republican.  The  people  of 
this  city  know  the  Republicans  will  not  do 
anything  for  them  in  the  long  run." 

"But  Nelson  Rockefeller  got  a  lot  of  votes 
in  Harlem,  didn't  he?"  Hal  protested. 

"Harlem  is  different,"  Ernie  explained.  "There 
is  Congressman  Adam  Clayton  Powell.  Harlem 
has  not  settled  down  since  1957." 

That  was  when  DeSapio  tried  to  purge  Powell 
who  was  having  income-tax  trouble  and  went 
for  Eisenhower  in  '56  after  Stevenson  talked 
moderation,  which  is  a  dirty  word  in  Harlem. 
Powell  is  a  famous  ladies'  man  and  minister 
of  the  Abyssinian  Baptist  Church.  He  clobbered 
DeSapio's  man  Earl  Brown  who  is  a  nice  fellow 
but  not  very  sexy  or  holy.  Harlem  closed  ranks 
behind  Powell  and  he  is  the  one  who  now  calls 
the  shots  there. 

"I  have  been  very  impressed  with  Congress- 
man Powell's  record  in  the  House  this  session," 
Hal  said.  "He  is  an  eloquent  spokesman  for 
Civil   Rights." 

"Who  is  against  Civil  Rights  in  New  York?" 
Ernie  asked.  "But  we  are  also  for  Partv  Dis- 
cipline which  Mr.  Powell  is  not." 

Powell  is  always  cooking  up  a  Harlem  Issue. 
He  did  it  last  year  when  Borough  President 
Hulan  Jack,  who  is  a  Negro,  was  booted  out 
after  he  had  a  decorating  job  in  his  apartment 
paid  for  by  a  public  housing  contractor  who  had 
not  done  any  noticeable  public  housing.  The 
Borough  President's  Office  is  very  important  be- 
cause it  has  many  exempt  jobs  for  people  who 
do  not  do  well  on  Civil  Service  examinations 
but  are  good  at  getting  out  the  vote.  Mayor 
Wagner  and  DeSapio  both  wanted  to  pick  Mr. 
Jack's  successor  and  they  have  not  been  at  all 
chummy  since  then  except  at  nonpartisan  occa- 
sions like  parades.  Powell  started  yelling  discrim- 
ination. This  was  silly  because  everyone  said 
the  new  Borough  President  must  be  a  Negro, 
only  DeSapio  and  Wagner  wanted  to  decide 
which  one.  Powell  also  said  Jack  did  not  have 
a  fair  trial,  which  was  not  so,  although  it  is 
true  that  the  whole  decorating  job  only  cost 
$5,000,  which  is  a  very  low  price  for  a  Borough 
President. 

"We  must  give  Harlem  the  full  treatment 
this  year,"  Ernie  said. 

"I  am  planning  an  earthy  emotional  appeal  to 
the  Negroes  and  Puerto  Ricans,"  Hal  said.  "I 
could  do  part  of  my  speech  in  Spanish." 


"That  will  not  be  necessary,"  I  told  him.  "Mrs. 
Martinez  who  will  be  on  the  Dais  is  a  co-leader 
and  has  learned  to  say  yes  in  English.  Most 
Puerto  Rican  ladies  do  not  go  to  the  Park 
Lane  for  lunch  very  much." 

"I  will  not  pull  any  punches  about  the  plight 
of  our  Negro  and  Puerto  Rican  citizens,"  Hal 
continued.  "I  know  about  the  families  living  in 
filthy  rat-infested,  one-room  apartments  without 
heat  or  decent  plumbing.  The  miserable  seg- 
regated schools.  The  pre-delinquent  adolescents 
doomed  to  illiteracy  because  they  cannot  speak 
English." 

"The  main  thing  is  to  get  the  Harlem  Leader- 
ship Team  lined  up,"  Ernie  said.  The  Leader- 
ship Team  is  Powell  and  Ray  Jones,  who  is 
called  The  Fox.  They  are  fighting  DeSapio  too 
but  not  about  Reform.  About  jobs.  They  are 
Organization  Insurgents.  "We  must  take  care 
of  them  right  this  year,"  Ernie  went  on.  "Maybe 
a  Commissioner  and  a  couple  Judges.  Who  you 
got  on  the  Dais  for  Harlem,  Tess?" 

"I  met  this  charming  Negro  lady  at  Mari- 
etta's," Carol  volunteered.  "She's  Urban  League 
or  YWCA.  A  Mrs.  Hollingshead.  Would  she  do? 

"Sarah  Hollingshead,"  said  Ernie,  whose  mem- 
ory is  perfect.  "Fine  woman.  Had  a  job  with 
O'Dwyer.  But  won't  do  for  the  Dais." 

"Why  not?"  Carol  asked. 

"Too  light,"  Ernie  said,  "for  pictures.  To  show 
up  right  for  Harlem  you  must  be  real  black." 

HA L  was  pacing  around  the  room  in  a 
very  jumpy  way.  "The  many  dissident 
factions  in  our  Party  disturb  me,"  he  said.  "I 
am  aware  that  a  candidate  for  high  office  must 
be  a  catalyst.  He  must  weld  together  the  warring 
factions  in  a  common  purpose." 

This  was  a  good  line  even  if  it  was  straight 
out  of  V.  O.  Key's  Politics,  Parties,  and  Pressure 
Groups  or  The  Federalist  Papers,  I  forget  which. 
I  flashed  him  the  comradely  smile  of  a  fellow 
pol.  sci.  major. 

"Whaddya   mean   factions?"   Ernie   snarled. 

Hal  was  not  listening,  which  is  a  bad  sign.  Can- 
didates are  very  hard  to  handle  when  they  get 
carried  away  by  their  own  eloquence. 

"The  great  challenge  as  I  see  it,"  he  went  on, 
"is  to  identify  the  Democratic  Party  of  New  York 
City  with  the  dynamic  forward  thrust  of  the 
National  Administration." 

"He  means  we  should  hook  into  the  New 
Frontier,"  I  translated  freely. 

"For  the  birds,"  Ernie  said.  "Do  not  start  new 
frontiering  around  here.  You  have  to  be  a 
Mormon  or  a  Connecticut  hillbilly  to  get  a  job 


44 


NEW     YORK     IS     DIFFERENT 


i)ui  t)l  Washington  iliese  days.  Tess,  wherc's  the 
coffee?" 

"They  charge  25  cents  a  cup  for  it  here," 
Carol  said.  "I  could  run  out  to  the  drug  store 
for  a  couple  of  cartons."  1  have  noticed  that 
millionaires  are  very  careful  about  money,  which 
is  possibly  how  they  got  that  way  in  the  first 
place.  Fortunatelv  a  surlv-looking  Avaitcr  arrived 
and  began  pushing  furniture  around  to  make 
room  for  a  king-size  table  full  of  coffee  urns. 
Hal  took  two  lumps  and  went  right  back  to  his 
Washington.  D.C.  pitch. 

"I  understand  the  patronage  difficulty  will 
soon  be  ironed  out  between  the  State  and  Na- 
ti(Hial  Committees."  he  said. 

"My  club  is  still  waiting, '  Ernie  said.  ".And 
we  do  not  intend  to  settle  for  an  .\ssistant  Fed- 
eral .\ttorney  and  other  leftover  jimk."  He 
picked  up  my  pad.  "Now  how  about  Dollv 
Schiff?" 

"I  will  be  mighty  proud  to  meet  the  lady  who 
jjublishes  the  only  Democratic  paper  in  this 
lity,"  Carol  chimed  in. 

"The  Post  is  not  exactly  what  you  ^\•oldd  call 
Democratic  in  Texas,"   Ernie  said. 

He  has  not  forgotten  that  Afrs.  Schiff  switched 
from  Harriman  to  Rockefeller  two  days  before 
election  in  1958.  You  really  cannot  tell  how 
the  Post  ^\'ill  go  except  that  they  are  always 
for  Israel.  I  wished  that  Hal  looked  more  like 
Ben-Gurion. 

"Dolly  will  be  on  the  Dais,"  I  said,  "uidess 
she  is  in  one  of  her  ^Vorking  Press  moods.  ^Ve 
always  save  two  places  for  her." 

Of  course  she  may  not  come  to 
the  Lmicheon  at  all.  I  woidd  not  be 
surprised  if  she  was  playing  footsie 
with  Fusion. 

"^Vith  everybody  so  mixed  up 
and  mad  at  each  other,"  Carol 
piped  up,  ■■ho^\•  can  the  Democrats 
win  this  election?  I  would  think 
this  \\'as  a  \erv  good  vear  for 
Fusion." 

It  is  wrong  to  figine  that  a 
woman  is  necessarily  a  birdbrain 
because  she  is  a  natural  blonde  and 
talks  like  Gone  -witJi   the   Wind. 

"But  they  got  no  candidate," 
Ernie  barked.  "Only  Republicans.  To  have  any 
chance  they  woidd  need  an  Independent  Demo- 
crat. .\nd  I  can  tell  you  a  Democrat  who  is  that 
Independent  woidd  be  dead  in  this  town." 

"\Vcll  now  it  just  might  be."  Carol  drawled, 
"that  they  cc^iild  find  the  right  one."  She  gave 
Hal    a    fourteen-caral    adoring  wife    look    and 


rattled  on.  "I  believe  I  coiUd  give  you  the  name 
of  an  Independent  Democrat  who  would  make 
a  really  heavenly  Fusion  Candidate  for  Mayor." 
Her  chatter  made  me  very  nervous  but  Ernie 
did  not  aret  the  message.  He  \\as  lookiin>  at  his 
Avatch.  It  was  nearly  one  o'clock  ami  all  organi- 
zation politicians  are  very  regular  in  their  eating 
habits. 

"Come  on,  Hal,  ^\•e  are  meeting  some  of  the 
Boys  downstairs  for  lunch."  he  annoimced.  "Tess 
you  go  to  the  coffee  shop  with  Carol  and  be 
back  here  at  three." 

"If  you  would  excuse  me,"  Hal  said.  "I  have 
promised  to  take  Carol  to  lunch.  We  are  going 
to  the  Colony  and  I  hope  Tess  will  join  us 
because  I  need  some  more  of  the  real  low-down 
on  New  York." 

Of  coinse  he  did  not  have  to  ask  me  twice 
though  it  was  too  bad  I  had  not  had  my  hair 
done.  The  Colony  is  so  expensive  it  makes  Bilt- 
more  prices  look  like  the  Automat.  I  am  glad 
Hal  is  less  thrifty  than  his  wife  because  a  Politi- 
cal l^nknown  has  to  pick  up  a  lot  of  tabs. 

"We  had  a  marvelous  lujich  but  Hal  did  not  eat 
much.  He  was  realh^woinid  up  and  I  must  admit 
sounded  pretty  good.  He  thinks  New  York  is  not 
verv  different  from  San  Francisco  or  Cleveland  or 
even  New  Haven,  where  he  lived  while  he  was  col- 
lecting degrees  from  different  colleges  before  go- 
ing to  hnv  school.  He  says  that  there  can  be  open 
bids  for  city  coiuracts  Avithout  deals  and  that  you 
can  build  apartments  near  offices.  He  thinks  you 
can  get  rid  of  shuns  without  shoving  the  people 
who  live  there  into  worse  slums. 
He  savs  a  lot  of  plavgrounds  would 
be  cheaper  than  a  ne\\'  ball  park 
and  then  children  would  have  a 
jjlace  to  play  without  moving  to 
\\'estchester.  He  also  thinks  that 
if  you  get  rid  of  graft  and  inef- 
ficiency in  City  Hall  there  will  be 
plenty  of  money  for  new  schools 
and  hos}iitals  and  if  there  are  no 
payoffs  business  will  be  so  good  the 
city  will  collect  more  taxes. 

Ernie  says  I  Avas  carried  away 
because  I  am  not  used  to  having 
two  Gibsons  and  Sparkling  Rin^- 
gimdy  for  linich.  But  I  still  think 
Hal  woidd  make  a  great  candidate  even  for 
Mayor.  Only  he  does  not  miderstand  why 
Fusion  is  a  bad  idea.  In  fact  he  seems  to  like  it. 
This  is  very  upsetting  because  campaigning  for 
him  would  certainly  be  a  change  of  jjace  for 
me.  But  a  Brooklyn  girl  has  to  dra^v  the  line 
somewhere. 


Hnrftcr's  MogtizinCj  July  1961 


MARY  McCarthy 


cr 


REALISM 


11 


in  the  American  Theatre 


How  good  are  our  "leading  playwrights" ? 

One  of  America's  sharpest  critical  minds  probes 

the  limitations  of  their  "gloomy  doctrine." 

WH  O  are  the  American  realist  play- 
wrights? Is  there,  as  is  assumed  abroad, 
a  school  of  realists  in  the  American  theatre  or  is 
this  notion  a  critical  figment? 

The  question  is  legitimate;  but  lor  purposes 
of  discussion,  I  am  going  to  take  for  granted 
that  there  is  such  a  group,  if  not  a  school,  and 
name  its  members:  Arthur  Miller,  Tennessee 
Williams,  William  Inge,  Paddy  Chayefsky,  the 
Elmer  Rice  of  Street  Scene.  Behind  them,  casting 
them  in  the  shadow,  stands  the  great  figure  of 
O'Neill,  and  opposite  them,  making  them  seem 
more  homogeneous,  are  writers  like  George 
Kelly,  Wilder,  Odets,  Saroyan.  Their  counter- 
parts in  the  novel  are  Dreiser,  Sherwood  Ander- 
son, James  T.  Farrell,  the  early  Thomas  Wolfe 
—which  illustrates,  by  the  way,  the  backwardness 
of  the  theatre  in  comparison  with  the  novel.  The 
theatre  seems  to  be  chronically  twenty  years 
behind,  regardless  of  realism,  as  the  relation  of 
Beckett   to  Joyce,  for  example,  shows. 

The  theatre  feeds  on  the  novel;  never  vice 
versa:  think  of  the  hundreds  of  dramatizations 
of  novels,  and  then  try  to  think  of  a  book  that 
was  "novelized"  from  a  play.  There  is  not  even 
a  word  for  it.  The  only  actual  case  I  can  call 
to  mind  is  The  Other  House  by  Henry  James— 
a  minor  novel  he  salvaged  from  a  play  of  his 
own  that  failed.  To  return  to  the  main  subject, 
one  characteristic  of  American  realism  in  the 
theatre  is  that  none  of  its  practitioners  currently 
wants  to  call  himself  a  realist.  Tennessee  Wil- 
liams is  known  to  his  admirers  as  a  "poetic 
realist,"   while   Arthur   Miller   declares    that   he 


is  an  exponent  of  the  "social  play"  and  identifies 
himself  with  the  Greek  playwrights,  whom  he 
describes  as  social  playwrights  also.  This  de- 
lusion was  dramatized,  if  that  is  the  word,  in 
A   View  from  the  Bridge. 

The  fact  that  not  one  of  these  playwrights 
cares  to  be  regarded  as  a  realist  without  some 
qualifying  or  mitigating  adjective  attached  to 
the  term  invites  a  definition  of  realism.  What 
does  it  mean  in  common  parlance?  I  have  looked 
the  word  "realist"  up  in  the  Oxford  English  Dic- 
tionary. Here  is  what  they  say:  ".  .  .  In  reference 
to  art  and  literature  sometimes  used  as  a  term 
of  commendation,  when  precision  and  vividness 
of  detail  are  regarded  as  a  merit,  and  sometimes 
unfavorably  contrasted  with  idealized  descrip- 
tion or  representation.  In  recent  use  it  has  often 
been  used  with  the  implication  that  the  details 
are  of  an  unpleasant  or  sordid  character."  This 
strikes  me  as  a  very  fair  account  of  the  historical 
fate  of  the  notion  of  realism,  but  I  shall  try  to 
particularize  a  little,  in  the  hope  of  finding  out 
why  and  how  this  happened.  And  I  shall  not 
be  condemning  realism  but  only  noting  what 
people  seem  to  think  it  is. 

When  we  say  that  a  novel  or  a  play  is  real- 
istic, we  mean,  certainly,  that  it  gives  a  picture 
of  ordinary  life.  Its  characters  will  be  drawn 
from  the  middle  class,  the  lower  middle  class, 
occasionally  the  working  class.  You  cannot  write 
realistic  drama  about  upper-class  life;  at  least, 
no  one  ever  has.  Aristocracy  does  not  lend  itself 
to  realistic  treatment,  but  to  one  or  another 
kind  of  stylization:  romantic  drama,  romantic 
comedy,  comedy  of  manners,  satire,  tragedy.  This 
fact  in  itself  is  a  realistic  criticism  of  the  aris- 
tocratic idea,  which  cannot  afford,  apparently, 
to  live  in  the  glass  house  of  the  realistic  stage. 
Kings  and  noble  men,  said  Aristotle,  are  the  pro- 
tagonists of  tragedy— not  women  or  slaves.  The 


46 


"REALISM"     IN      THE     THEATRE 


same  is  true  of  nobility  of  character  or  intellect. 
The  exceptional  man,  whether  he  be  Oedipus 
or  King  Lear  or  one  of  the  romantic  revolution- 
ary heroes  of  Hugo  or  Musset,  is  fitted  to  be 
the  protagonist  of  a  tragedy,  but  just  this  tragic 
fitness  disqualifies  him  from  taking  a  leading 
role  in  a  realist  drama.  Such  figures  as  Othello 
or  Hernani  can  never  be  the  subject  of  realistic 
treatment,  unless  it  is  with  the  object  of  deflating 
them,  showing  how  ordinary— petty  or  squalid— 
they  are.  But  then  the  hero  is  no  longer  Othello 
but  an  impostor  posing  as  Othello.  Cut  down 
to  size,  he  is  just  like  everybody  else  but  worse, 
because  he  is  a   fraud  into  the  bargain. 

This  abrupt  foreshortening  is  why  realistic 
treatment  of  upper-class  life  always  takes  the 
harsh  plunge  into  satire.  No  man  is  a  hero  to 
his  valet,  and  Beaumarchais'  Figaro  is  the  spokes- 
man of  social  satire— not  of  realism;  his  per- 
sonal and  private  realism  turns  his  master  into 
a  clown.  Realism  deals  with  ordinary  men  and 
women  or,  in  extreme  forms,  with  sub-ordinary 
men,  men  on  the  level  of  beasts  or  of  blind  con- 
ditioned reflexes  (for  example,  Tlic  Hairy  Ape). 
This  tendency  is  usually  identified  with  natural- 
ism, but  I  am  regarding  naturalism  as  simply 
a  variety  of  realism. 

Realism,  historically,  is  associated  with  two 
relatively  modern  inventions,  i.e.,  with  journal- 
ism and  with  photography.  "Photographic  real- 
ism" is  a  pejorative  term,  and  enemies  of  realis- 
tic literature  often  dismissed  it  as  "no  more 
than  journalism,"  implying  that  journalism  was 
a  sordid,  seamy  affair— a  daily  photographic  close- 
up,  as  it  were,  of  the  clogged  pores  of  society. 
The  author  as  sheer  observer  likened  himself 
to  a  camera  (Dos  Passos,  Christopher  Isherwood, 
Wright  Morris),  and  insofar  as  the  realistic  novel 
was  vowed  to  be  a  reflector  of  ordinary  life, 
the  newspapers  inevitably  became  a  prime  source 
of  material.  In  America,  in  the  early  part  of 
this  century,  the  realistic  novel  was  a  partner  of 


Mary  McCarthy's  fiction  and  criticism  have 
kept  her  in  the  intellectual  vanguard  in  this  country 
since  her  first  novel,  "The  Company  She  Keeps"  ivas 
published  in  1942.  She  has  written  ivith  vigor  and 
distinction  on  subjects  as  diverse  as  "Memories  of  a 
Catholic  Girlhood"  (in  Seattle),  "The  Groves  of 
Academe"  fin  the  Eastern  U.S.A.),  and  "The  Stones 
of  Florence."  Her  theatrical  criticism  was  collected 
in  "Sights  and  Spectacles."  Her  new  book  of  essays 
(including  this  one)  will  be  called  "On  the  Con- 
trary" and  will  be  published  by  Farrar,  Straus  and 
Cudahy  in  September.  Married  to  James  West,  the 
U.S.  cultural  attache,  she  now  lives  in   Warsaw, 


what  was  callcil  "nuick-raking"  journalism,  anc 
both  were  linkctl  with  populism  and  crusade;' 
for  political  reform. 

Hence,  perhaps,  in  part,  the  imsavory  associ 
ations  in  common  speech  of  the  word  "realistic," 
even  when  applied  in  nonliterary  contexts. 
Take  the  phrase  "a  realistic  decision."  If  some-| 
one  tells  you  he  is  going  to  make  "a  realistic 
decision,"  )ou  immediately  understand  that  he  | 
has  resolved  to  do  something  bad.  The  same 
with  "Realpolidk."  A  "realistic  politics"  is  a 
euphemism  for  a  politics  of  harsh  opportunism; 
if  you  hear  someone  say  that  it  is  time  for  a 
government  to  follow  a  realistic  line,  you  can 
interpret  this  as  meaning  that  it  is  time  for 
principles  to  be  abandoned. 

WHiatever  the  field,  whenever  you  hear  that  a 
subject  is  to  be  treated  "realistically,"  you  ex- 
pect that  its  unpleasant  aspects  are  to  be  brought 
forward.  So  it  is  with  the  play  and  the  novel. 
A  delicate  play  like  Turgenev's  A  Month  in  the 
Coinitry,  though  perfectly  truthful  to  life,  seems 
deficient  in  realism  in  comparison  with  the 
stronger  medicine  of  Gorki's  The  Lower  Depths. 
This  is  true  of  Turgenev's  novels  as  well  and 
of  such  English  writers  as  Mrs.  Gaskell.  And 
of  the  jDeaceful  parts  of  War  and  Peace.  Ordi- 
nary life  treated  in  its  uneventful  aspects  tends 
to  turn  into  an  idyl.  We  think  of  Turgenev  and 
Mrs.  Gaskell  almost  as  pastoral  writers,  despite 
the  fact  that  their  faithful  sketches  have  nothing 
in  common  with  the  artificial  convention  of  the 
trtie  pastoral.  We  suspect  that  there  is  some- 
thing Arcadian  here— something  "unrealistic." 

AN     AFFINITY     FOR     CRIME 

IF  realism  deals  Avith  the  ordinary  man  em- 
bedded in  ordinary  life,  which  for  the  most 
part  is  uneventftd,  what  then  is  the  criterion 
that  makes  us  forget  Tiugenev  or  Mrs.  Gaskell 
Avhen  we  name  off  the  realists?  I  think  it  is  this: 
what  we  call  realism,  and  particularly  dramatic 
realism,  tends  to  single  out  the  ordinary  man  at 
the  moment  he  might  get  into  ihe  newspaper. 
The  criterion,  in  other  words,  is  draAvn  from 
journalism.  The  ordinary  man  must  become 
"news"  before  he  qualifies  to  be  the  protagonist 
of  a  realistic  play  or  novel.  The  exceptional  man 
is  news  at  all  times,  but  how  can  the  ordinary 
man  get  into  the  paper?  By  committing  a  crime. 
Or,  more  rarely,  by  getting  inxolved  in  a  spec- 
tacular accident.  Since  accidents,  in  general, 
are  barred  from  the  drama,  this  leaves  crime- 
murder  oi  suicide  ox  embe/zlement.  And  we 
find    that    the    protagonists    of   realistic    drama. 


BY    MARY    McCarthy 


47 


by  and  large,  are  the  protagonists  of  newspaper 
stories— "little  men"  who  have  shot  their  wives 
or  killed  themselves  in  the  garage  or  gone  to 
jail  for  fraud  or  embezzlement. 

Now  drama  has  always  had  an  affinity  for 
crime— long  before  realism  was  known,  Oedipus 
and  Clytemnestra  and  Macbeth  and  Othello  were 
famous  for  their  deeds  of  blood.  But  the  crimes 
of  tragedy  are  the  crimes  of  heroes,  while  the 
crimes  of  realistic  drama  are  the  crimes  of  the 
nondescript  person,  the  crimes  that  are,  in  a 
sense,  all  alike.  The  individual  in  the  realistic 
drama  is  regarded  as  a  cog  or  a  statistic;  he 
commits  the  uniform  crime  that  sociologically 
he  might  be  expected  to  commit.  That  is,  sup- 
posing that  1,031  bookkeepers  in  New  York 
State  are  destined  annually  to  falsify  the  firm's  ac- 
counts, 207  policemen  to  shoot  their  wives,  and 
1,115  householders  to  do  away  with  themselves 
in  the  garage,  each  individual  bookkeeper,  cop, 
and  householder  has  been  holding  a  ticket  in 
this  statistical  lottery— like  the  fourteen  Athenian 
youths  and  maidens  sent  off  yearly  to  the  Mino- 
taur's labyrinth— and  he  acquires  interest  for  the 
realist  theatre  only  when  his  "number"  comes  up. 

To  put  it  simply,  Frank,  the  stagehand  in 
Street  Scene,  commits  his  crime— wife  murder- 
without  having  the  moral  freedom  to  choose  as 
an  individual  to  commit  it,  just  as  Willy  Loman 
in  Death  of  a  Salesman  commits  suicide— under 
sociological  pressure.  The  hero  of  tragedy,  on 
the  contrary,  is  a  morally  free  being  who  iden- 
tifies himself  with  his  crime,  and  this  is  true 
even  where  he  is  fated,  like  Oedipus,  to  commit 
it  and  can  be  said  to  have  no  personal  choice 
in  the  matter.  Oedipus  both  rejects  and  accepts 
his  deeds,  embraces  them  in  free  will  at  last  as 
liis.  It  is  the  same  with  Othello  or  Hamlet. 

The  distinction  will  be  clear  if  you  ask  your- 
self what  tragedy  of  Shakespeare  is  closest  to  the 
realistic  theatre.  The  answer,  surely,  is  Macbeth. 
And  why?  Because  of  Lady  Macbeth.  Macbeth 
really  doesn't  choose  to  murder  the  sleeping 
Duncan;  Lady  Macbeth  chooses  for  him;  he  is 
like  a  middle-class  husband,  nagged  on  by  his 
ambitious  wife,  the  way  the  second  vice  presi- 
dent of  a  bank  is  nagged  on  by  his  Mrs.  Macbeth, 
who  wants  him  to  become  first  vice  president. 
The  end  of  the  tragedy,  however,  reverses  all 
this;  Macbeth  becomes  a  hero  only  late  in  the 
drama,  when  he  pushes  Lady  Macbeth  aside 
and  takes  all  his  deeds  on  himself.  Paradoxically, 
the  conspicuous  tragic  hero  is  never  free  not 
to  do  his  deed;  he  cannot  escape  it,  as  Hamlet 
found.  But  the  mute  hero  or  protagonist  of  a 
realistic  play  is  always  free,  at  least  seemingly, 


not  to  emerge  from  obscurity  and  get  his  picture 
in  the  paper.  There  is  always  the  chance  that 
not  he  but  some  other  nondescript  bookkeeper 
or  policeman  will  answer  the  statistical  call. 

The  heroes  of  realistic  plays  are  clerks,  book- 
keepers, policemen,  housewives,  salesmen,  school- 
teachers, small  and  middling  business  men.  They 
commit  crimes  but  they  cannot  be  professional 
criminals  (unlike  the  heroes  of  Genet  or  the  char- 
acters in  The  Beggar's  Opera),  for  professional 
criminals,  like  kings  and  noble  men,  are  a  race 
apart. 

THE     RUBBER     PLANT 

TH  E  settings  of  realistic  plays  are  offices, 
drab  dining-rooms  or  living-rooms,  or  the 
back  yard,  which  might  be  defined  as  a  place 
where  some  grass  has  once  been  planted  and 
failed  to  grow.  The  back  yard  is  a  favorite  locus 
for  American  realist  plays,  but  no  realist  play 
takes  place  in  a  garden. 

Nature  is  excluded  from  the  realist  play,  as 
it  has  been  from  the  realistic  novel.  The  presence 
of  nature  in  Turgenev  (and  in  Chekhov)  denotes, 
as  I  have  suggested,  a  pastoral  intrusion.  If  a 
realist  play  does  not  take  place  in  the  back  yard, 
where  nature  has  been  eroded  by  clothes  poles, 
garbage  cans,  bottled-gas  tanks,  and  so  on,  it 
takes  place  indoors,  where  the  only  plant,  gen- 
erally, is  a  rubber  plant.  Even  with  Ibsen,  the 
action  is  confined  to  a  room  or  pair  of  rooms 
until  the  late  plays  like  The  Lady  from  the  Sea, 
The  Master  Builder,  John  Gabriel  Borkman, 
when  the  realistic  style  has  been  abandoned  for 
symbolism  and  the  doors  are  swung  open  to  the 
garden,  mountains,  the  sea.  Ibsen,  however,  is  an 
exception  to  the  general  rule  that  the  indoor 
scene  must  be  unattractive;  his  middle-class 
Scandinavians  own  some  handsome  furniture; 
Nora's  house,  like  any  doll's  house,  must  have 
been  charmingly  appointed. 

But  Ibsen  is  an  exception  to  another  rule 
that  seems  to  govern  realistic  drama  (and  the 
novel  too,  for  that  matter)— the  rule  that  it  must 
not  be  well  written.  (Thanks  to  William  Archer's 
wooden  translations,  his  work  now  falls  into 
line  in  English.)  This  rule  in  America  has  the 
force,  almost,  of  a  law,  one  of  those  iron  laws 
that  work  from  within  necessity  itself,  appar- 
ently, and  without  conscious  human  aid.  Our 
American  realists  do  not  try  to  write  badly. 
Many,  like  Arthur  Miller,  strive  to  write  "well," 
but  like  Dreiser  in  the  novels,  they  are  cursed 
with  inarticulateness.  They  "grope."  They  are, 
as  O'Neill  said  of  himself,  "fogbound." 


48 


"REALISM"     IN      THE     THEATRE 


1  he  heroes  are  petty  or  colorless;  the  settings 
are  drab;  the  language  is  lame.  Thus  the  ugli- 
ness of  the  torm  is  complete.  I  am  not  say- 
ing this  as  a  criticism,  only  observing  that  when 
a  play  or  a  novel  fails  to  meet  these  norms,  we 
cease  to  think  of  it  as  realistic.  Flaubert,  known 
to  be  a  "stylist,"  ceases  to  count  for  us  as  a  realist, 
and  even  in  the  last  century,  Matthew  Arnold, 
hailing  Tolstoy  as  a  realist,  was  blinded  by  cat- 
egorical thinking— with  perhaps  a  little  help  from 
the  translations— into  calling  his  novels  raw  "slices 
of  life,"  sprawling,  formless,  and  so  on.  But  it  is 
these  cliches,  in  the  long  run,  that  have  won  out. 
The  realistic  novel  today  is  more  like  what 
Arnold  thought  Tolstoy  was  than  it  is  like 
Tolstoy  or  any  of  the  early  realists. 

This  question  of  the  beauty  of  form  also 
touches  the  actor.  An  actor  formerly  was  sup- 
posed to  be  a  good-looking  man,  with  a  hand- 
some figure,  beautiful  movements,  and  a  noble 
diction.  These  attributes  are  no  longer  necessary 
for  a  stage  career;  indeed,  in  America  they  are 
a  pcjsitive  handicap.  A  good-looking  young  man 
who  moves  well  and  speaks  well  is  becoming 
almost  unemployable  in  American  "legit"  the- 
atre; his  best  hope  today  is  to  look  for  work  in 
musical  comedy.  Or  posing  for  advertisements. 
On  the  English  stage,  where  realism  until  re- 
cently never  got  a  foothold,  the  good-looking 
actor  still  rules  the  roost,  but  the  English  actor 
cannot  j:)lay  American  realist  parts,  while  the 
American  actor  cannot  play  Shakespeare  or  Shaw. 
A  pretty  girl  in  America  may  still  hope  to  be  an 
actress,  though  even  here  there  are  signs  of  a 
change:  the  heroine  of  O'Neill's  late  play,  A 
Moon  for  the  Misbegotten,  was  a  freckled  giant- 
ess five  feet  eleven  inches  tall  and  weighing 
180  pounds. 

Eisenstein  and  the  Italian  neo-realists  used  peo- 
ple off  the  street  for  actors— a  logical  inference 
from  premises  which,  being  egalitarian  and 
documentary,  are  essentially  hostile  to  profes- 
sional elites,  including  Cossacks,  Swiss  Guards, 
and  actors.  The  professional  actor  in  his  grease 
paint  is  the  antithesis  of  the  pallid  man  on  the 
street.  But  film  and  stage  realism  are  not  so 
democratic  in  their  principles  as  may  at  first 
appear.  To  begin  with,  the  director  and  a  small 
corps  of  professionals— electricians  and  camera- 
men—assume absolute  power  over  the  masses, 
i.e.,  over  the  untrained  actors  picked  from  the 
crowd;  no  resistance  is  encountered,  as  it  would 
be  with  professional  actors,  in  molding  the  hu- 
man material  to  the  director-dictator's  will.  And 
even  with  stars  and  all-professional  casts,  the 
same   tendency   is  found  in   the  modon   realist 


or  neo-rcalist  directt^r.  Hence  the  whispered 
stories  of  stars  deliberately  broken  by  a  direc- 
tor: James  Dean  and  Brigitte  Bardot.  Similar 
stories  of  brain-washing  are  heard  backstage. 
This  is  not  surprising  if  realism,  as  we  now  know 
it,  rejects  as  nonaverage  whatever  is  noble,  beau- 
tiful, or  seemly,  whatever  is  capable  of  "ges- 
ture," whatever  in  fact  is  free. 


THE     GLOOMY     DOCTRINE 

EVERYTHING  I  have  been  saying  up 
till  now  can  be  summed  up  in  a  sentence. 
Realism  is  a  depreciation  of  the  real.  It  is  a 
gloomy  puritan  doctrine  that  has  flourished 
chiefly  in  puritan  countries— America,  Ireland, 
Scandinavia,  northern  France,  nonconformist 
England— chilly,  chilblained  countries,  where  the 
daily  world  is  ugly  and  everything  is  done  to 
keep  it  so,  as  if  as  a  punishment  for  sin.  The 
doctrine  is  spreading  with  industrialization, 
the  growth  of  ugly  cities,  and  the  erosion  of 
nature.  It  came  late  to  the  English  stage,  long 
after  it  had  appeared  in  the  novel,  because  those 
puritan  elements  witb  which  it  is  naturally  allied 
have,  up  until  now,  considered  the  theatre  to 
be  wicked. 

At  the  same  time,  in  defense  of  realism,  it 
must  be  said  that  its  great  enemy  has  been  just 
that  puritan  life  whose  gray  color  it  has  taken. 
The  original  realists— Ibsen  in  the  theatre,  Flau- 
bert in  the  novel— regarded  themselves  as 
"pagans,"  in  opposition  to  their  puritan  con- 
temporaries, and  adhered  to  a  religion  of  beauty 
or  Nature;  they  dreamed  of  freedom  and  hedon- 
istic license  (Flaubert),  and  exalted  the  auton- 
omy of  the  individual  will  (Ibsen).  Much  of 
this  "paganism"  is  still  found  in  O'Casey  and 
in  the  early  O'Neill,  a  curdled  puritan  of  Irish- 
American  stock. 

The  original  realists  were  half  Dionysian 
aesthetes  ("the  vine-leaves  in  his  hair"),  and 
their  heroes  and  heroines  were  usually  rebels, 
protesting  the  drabness  and  meanness  of  the 
common  life.  Ibsen's  characters  complain  that 
they  are  "stifling";  in  the  airless  hypocrisy  of 
the  puritan  middle-class  parlor,  people  were 
being  j)oisoned  by  the  dead  gas  of  lies.  Hypocrisy 
is  the  cardinal  sin  of  the  middle  class,  and  the 
exposure  of  a  lie  is  at  the  center  of  all  Ibsen's 
plots.  The  strength  and  passion  of  realism  is  its 
resolve  to  tell  the  whole  truth;  this  explains 
why  the  realist  in  his  indictment  of  society 
avoids  the  old  method  of  satire  with  its  deligliied 
exaggeration. 

The   realist   drama    at    its    Iiighest   is   an    im- 


BY    MARY    McCarthy 


49 


placable  expose.  Ibsen  rips  oft  the  curtain  and 
shows  his  audiences  to  themselves,  and  there  is 
something  inescapable  in  the  manner  of  the  con- 
frontation, like  a  case  slowly  being  built.  The 
pillars  of  society  who  sit  in  the  best  seats  are,  bit 
by  bit,  informed  that  they  are  rotten  and  that 
the  commerce  they  live  on  is  a  commerce  of 
"coffin  ships."  The  action  of  the  Ibsen  stage 
is  too  close  for  comfort  to  the  lives  of  the  audi- 
ence; only  the  invisible  "fourth  wall"  divides 
them.  "This  is  the  way  we  live  now!"  Moral 
examination,  self-examination  are  practiced  as 
a  duty,  a  Protestant  stock-taking,  in  the  realist 
mission  hall. 


IN     THE     COFFIN, 
THE     CORPSE 

FO  R  this,  it  is  essential  that  the  audience 
accept  the  picture  as  true;  it  cannot  be  per- 
mitted to  feel  that  it  is  watching  something 
"made  up"  or  embellished.  Hence  the  stripping 
down  of  the  form  and  the  elimination  of  effects 
that  might  be  recognized  as  literary.  For  the 
first  time,  too,  in  the  realist  drama,  the  acces- 
sories of  the  action  are  described  at  length  by 
the  playwright.  The  details  must  strike  home  and 
convince.  The  audience  must  be  able  to  place 
the  furniture,  the  carpets,  the  ornaments,  the 
napery  and  glassware  as  "just  what  these  people 
would  have." 

This  accounts  for  the  importance  of  the  stage 
set.  Many  critics  who  scornfully  dismiss  the 
'boxlike  set"  of  the  realistic  drama,  with  its  care- 
ful disposition  of  furniture,  do  not  understand 
its  function.  This  box  is  the  box  or  "coffin"  of 
average  middle-class  life  opened  at  one  end  to 
reveal  the  corpse  within,  looking,  as  all  em- 
balmed corpses  are  said  to  do,  "just  as  if  it  were 
alive."  Inside  the  realist  drama,  whenever  it  is 
genuine  and  serious,  there  is  a  kind  of  double 
illusion,  a  false  bottom:  everything  appears  to  be 
lifelike  but  this  appearance  of  life  is  death.  The 
stage  set  remains  a  central  element  in  all  true 
realism;  it  cannot  be  replaced  by  scrim  or  plat- 
forms. 

In  A  Long  Day's  Journey  into  Night,  surely 
the  greatest  realist  drama  since  Ibsen,  the 
family  living-room,  with  its  central  overhead 
lighting  fixture  is  as  solid  and  eternal  as  oak 
and  as  sad  as  wicker,  and  O'Neill  in  the  text 
tells  the  stage  designer  what  books  must  be  in  the 
glassed-in  bookcase  on  the  left  and  what  books 
in  the  other  by  the  entrance. 

The  tenement  of  Rice's  Street  Scene  (in  the 
opera  version)  was  a  magnificent  piece  of  char- 


acterization; so  was  the  Bronx  living-room  of 
Odets'  Aioake  and  Sing—hh  sole  (and  successful) 
experiment  with  realism.  I  can  still  see  the  bowl 
of  fruit  on  the  table,  slightly  to  the  left  of  stage 
center,  and  hear  the  Jewish  mother  interrupting 
whoever  happened  to  be  talking,  to  say,  "Have 
a  piece  of  fruit."  That  bowl  of  fruit,  which  ivas 
the  Jewish  Bronx,  remains  more  memorable  as 
a  character  than  many  of  the  people  in  the 
drama.  This  gift  of  characterization  through 
props  and  stage  set  is  shared  by  Paddy  Chayefsky 
in  Middle  of  the  Night  and  by  William  Inge  in 
Come  Back,  Little  Sheba,  where  an  unseen  prop 
or  accessory,  the  housewife's  terrible  frowsty 
little  dog,  is  the  master  stroke  of  realist  illusion- 
ism  and,  more  than  that,  a  kind  of  ghostly  totem. 
All  these  plays,  incidentally,  are  stories  of  death- 
in-life. 

This  urgent  correspondence  with  a  familiar 
reality,  down  to  the  last  circumstantial  detail, 
is  what  makes  realism  so  gripping,  like  a  trial 
in  court.  The  dramatist  is  witnessing  or  testify- 
ing, on  an  oath  never  sworn  before  in  a  work 
of  art,  not  to  leave  out  anything  and  to  tell  the 
truth  to  the  best  of  his  ability.  And  yet  the 
realistic  dramatist,  beginning  with  Ibsen,  is 
aware  of  a  missing  element.  The  realist  mode 
seems  to  generate  a  dissatisfaction  with  itself, 
even  in  the  greatest  masters:  Tolstoy,  for  ex- 
ample, came  to  feel  that  his  novels,  up  to  Resur- 
rection, were  inconsequential,  trifling;  the  vital 
truth  had  been  left  out.  In  short,  as  a  novelist, 
he  began  to  feel  like  a  hypocrite.  This  dissatisfac- 
tion with  realism  was  evidently  suffered  also  by 
Ibsen;  halfway  through  his  realist  period,  you  see 
him  start  to  look  for  another  dimension.  Hardly 
had  he  discovered  or  invented  the  new  dramatic 
mode  than  he  showed  signs  of  being  cramped 
by  it;  he  experienced,  if  his  plays  are  an  index, 
that  same  sense  of  confinement,  of  being  stifled, 
within  the  walls  of  realism  that  his  characters 
experience  within  the  walls  of  middle-class  life. 
Something  was  missing:  air. 

This  is  already  plain  in  The  Wild  Duck,  a 
strange  piece  of  autocriticism  and  probably  his 
finest  play;  chafing,  restless,  mordant,  he  is  search- 
ing for  something  else,  for  a  poetic  element, 
which  he  represents,  finally,  in  the  wild  duck 
itself,  a  dramatic  symbol  for  that  cherished  wild 
freedom  that  neither  Ibsen  nor  his  characters 
can  maintain,  without  harming  it,  in  a  shut-in 
space.  But  to  resort  to  symbols  to  make  good 
the  missing  element  becomes  a  kind  of  forcing, 
like  trying  to  raise  a  wild  bird  in  an  attic,  and 
the  strain  of  this  is  felt  in  Rosmersholm,  where 
symbols  play  a  larger  part  and  are  charged  with 


50 


REALISM"     IN      THE     THEATRE 


a  more  oppressive  weight  of  meaning.  In  TJie 
Lady  from  the  Sea,  The  Master  Builder,  and 
other  late  plays,  the  symbols  have  broken  through 
the  thin  fence  or  framework  of  realism;  poetry 
has  spread  its  crippled  wings,  but  the  price  has 
been  heavy. 

The  whole  history  of  dramatic  realism  is  en- 
capsulated in  Ibsen:  first,  the  renunciation  of 
verse  and  of  historical  and  philosophical  subjects 
in  the  interests  of  prose  and  the  present  time; 
then  the  dissatisfaction  and  the  attempt  to  re- 
store the  lost  element  through  a  recourse  to 
symbols;  then,  or  at  the  same  time,  a  forcing  of 
the  action  of  the  climaxes  to  heighten  the  drama; 
finally,  the  renunciation  of  realism  in  favor  of  a 
mixed  mode  or  hodgepodge.  The  reaching  for 
tragedy  at  the  climaxes  is  evident  in  Hedda 
Gabler  and  still  more  so  in  Rosmersholm ,  where, 
to  me  at  any  rate,  that  climactic  shriek,  "To  the 
mill  race!"  is  absurdly  like  a  bad  film. 

Many  of  Ibsen's  big  moments,  even  as  early 
as  A  Doll's  House,  strike  me  as  false  and  gran- 
diose, that  is,  precisely,  as  stagy.  Nor  is  it  only  in 
the  context  of  realism  that  they  apjjear  so.  It  is 
not  just  that  one  objects  that  people  do  not 
act  or  talk  like  that— which  is  Tolstoy's  criticism 
of  King  Lear  on  the  heath.  If  you  compare  the 
mill-race  scene  in  Rosmersholm  with  the  climax 
of  a  Shakespearean  tragedy,  you  will  see  that  the 
Shakespearean  heroes  are  far  less  histrionic,  more 
natural  and  ordinary;  there  is  always  a  stillness 
at  the  center  of  the  Shakespearean  storm.  It  is 
as  if  the  realist,  in  reaching  for  tragedy,  were 
punished  for  his  hubris  by  a  ludicrous  fall  into 
bathos.  Tragedy  is  impossible  by  definition  in 
the  quotidian  realist  mode,  since  (quite  aside 
from  the  question  of  the  hero)  tragedy  is  the  ex- 
ceptional action  one  of  whose  signs  is  beauty. 

o'neill's    long    quest 

IN  America  the  desire  to  supply  the  missing 
element  (usually  identified  as  poetry  or 
"beauty")  seems  to  grow  stronger  and  stronger 
exactly  in  proportion  to  the  author's  awkward- 
ness with  language.  The  less  a  playwright  can 
write  prose,  the  more  he  wishes  to  write  poetry 
and  to  raise  his  plays  by  their  bootstraps  to  a 
higher  realm.  You  find  these  applications  of 
"beauty"  in  Arthur  Miller  and  Tennessee  Wil- 
liams; they  stand  out  like  rouge  on  a  pitted 
complexion;  it  is  as  though  the  author  first 
wrote  the  play  naturalistically  and  then  gave  it  a 
beauty  treatment  or  face  lift. 

Before  them,  O'Neill,  who  was  too  honest  and 
too  philosophically  inclined  to  be  satisfied  by  a 


surface  solution,  kept  looking  methodically  for 
a  way  of  representing  the  missing  element  in 
dramas  that  would  still  be  realistic  at  the  core. 
He  experimented  with  masks  {Tlie  Great  God 
Brown),  with  the  aside  and  the  soliloquy  (Strange 
Interlude),  with  a  story  and  pattern  borrowed 
from  the  Greek  classic  drama  (Mourning  Be- 
comes Electro). 

In  other  words,  he  imported  into  the  American 
home  or  farm  the  machinery  of  tragedy.  But  his 
purpose  was  always  a  greater  realism.  His  use 
of  the  aside,  for  example,  was  very  different 
from  the  traditional  use  of  the  aside  (a  kind 
of  nudge  to  the  audience,  usually  on  the  part 
of  the  villain,  to  let  them  in  on  his  true  intent 
or  motive);  in  Strange  Interlude  O'Neill  was 
trying,  through  the  aside,  to  make  available  to 
the  realistic  drama  the  discoveries  of  modern 
psychology,  to  represent  on  the  stage  the  un- 
conscious selves  of  his  characters,  at  cross  purposes 
with  their  conscious  selves  but  just  as  real  if 
not  realer,  at  least  according  to  the  psychoan- 
alysts. 

He  was  trying,  in  short,  to  give  a  more  com- 
j)lete  picture  of  ordinary  people  in  their  daily 
lives.  It  was  the  same  with  his  use  of  masks  in 
TJie  Great  God  Broxvn;  he  was  appropriating 
the  mask  of  Athenian  drama,  a  ritual  means  of 
putting  a  distance  between  the  human  actor 
and  the  audience,  to  bring  his  own  audience 
closer  to  the  inner  humanity  of  his  character— 
the  man  behind  the  mask  of  conformity.  The  fact 
that  these  devices  were  clumsy  is  beside  the 
point.  O'Neill's  sincerity  usually  involved  him 
in  clumsiness.  In  the  end,  he  came  back  to  the 
straight  realism  of  his  beginnings:  The  Long 
Voyage  Home,  the  title  of  his  young  Caribbean 
series,  could  also  be  the  title  of  the  great  play 
of  his  old  age:  A  Long  Day's  Journey  into  Night. 
He  has  sailed  beyond  the  horizon  and  back  into 
port;  the  circle  is  complete.  In  this  late  play, 
the  quest  for  the  missing  element,  as  such,  is 
renounced;  poetry  is  held  to  be  finally  unattain- 
able by  the  author. 

"I  couldn't  touch  what  I  tried  to  tell  you  just 
now,"  says  the  character  who  is  supposed  to  be 
the  young  O'Neill.  "I  just  stammered.  That's  the 
best  I'll  ever  do.  I  mean,  if  I  live.  Well,  it  will 
be  faithful  realism,  at  least.  Stammering  is  the 
native  eloquence  of  us  fog  people." 

In  this  brave  acknowledgment  or  advance  ac- 
ceptance of  failure,  there  is  something  very 
moving.  Moreover,  the  acceptance  of  defeat  was 
in  fact  the  signal  of  a  victory.  A  Long  Day's 
Journey  into  Night,  sheer  dogged  prose  from  be- 
ginning to  end,  achieves  in  fact  a  peculiar  jjoeti  y, 


and  the  relentless  amassing  of  particulars  takes 
on,  eventually,  some  of  the  crushing  force  of  in- 
exorable logic  that  we  find  in  Racine  or  in  a 
Greek  play.  The  weight  of  circumstance  itself 
becomes  a  fate  or  Nemesis.  This  is  the  closest, 
probably,  that  realism  can  get  to  tragedy. 

The  "stammering"  of  O'Neill  was  what  made 
his  later  plays  so  long,  and  the  stammering, 
which  irritated  some  audiences,  impatient  for 
the  next  syllable  to  fall,  was  a  sign  of  the  author's 
agonized  determination  to  be  truthful.  If  O'Neill 
succeeded,  at  last,  in  deepening  the  character 
of  his  realism,  it  was  because  the  missing  element 
he  strove  to  represent  was  not,  in  the  end, 
"poetry"  or  "beauty"  or  "philosophy"  (though 
he  sometimes  seems  to  have  felt  that  it  was)  but 
simply  meaning— the  total  significance  of  an  ac- 
tion. What  he  came  to  conclude,  rather  wearily, 
in  his  last  plays  was  that  the  total  significance  of 
an  action  lay  in  the  accumulated  minutiae  of  that 
action  and  could  not  be  abstracted  from  it,  at 
least  not  by  him.  There  was  no  truth  or  meaning 
beyond  the  event  itself;  anything  more  (or  less) 
would  be  a  lie.  This  pun  or  tautology,  this  con- 
undrum, committed  him  to  a  cycle  of  repetition, 
and  memory,  the  mother  of  the  Muses,  became 
his  only  muse. 

TOWARD     THE     UNIVERSAL 

TH  E  younger  American  playwrights— Mil- 
ler, Williams,  Inge,  Chayefsky— now  all 
middle-aged,  are  pledged,  like  O'Neill,  to  veri- 
similitude. They  purport  to  offer  a  "slice  of  life" 
—in  Tennessee  Williams'  case  a  rich,  spicy  slab 
of  Southern  fruit  cake,  but  still  a  slice  of  life. 
The  locus  of  their  plays  is  the  American  porch 
or  back  yard  or  living-room  or  parlor  or  bus 
station,  presented  as  typical,  authentic  as  home- 
fried  potatoes  or  "real  Vermont  maple  syrup." 
This  authenticity  may  be  regional,  as  with  Wil- 
liams and  Chayefsky  (a  New  Orleans  slum,  a 
Long  Island  synagogue),  or  it  may  claim  to  be  as 
broad  as  the  nation,  as  with  Arthur  Miller,  or 
somewhere  rather  central,  in  between  the  two, 
as  with  William  Inge.  But  in  any  case  the  prom- 
ise of  these  playwrights  is  to  show  an  ordinary 
home,  an  ordinary  group  of  bus  passengers,  a 
typical  manufacturer,  and  so  on,  and  the  drama- 
tis personae  tend  to  resemble  a  small-town,  non- 
blue-ribbon  jury:  housewife,  lawyer,  salesman, 
chiropractor,  working  man,  schoolteacher.  .  .  . 
Though  Tennessee  Williams'  characters  are 
more  exotic,  they  too  are  offered  as  samples  to  the 
audience's  somewhat  voyeuristic  eye;  when 
Williams'    film.    Baby    Doll,    was    attacked    by 


BY   MARY   McCarthy        si 

Cardinal  Spellman,  the  director  (Elia  Kazan) 
defended  it  on  the  grounds  that  it  was  true  to 
the  life  that  he  and  Williams  had  observed,  on 
location,  in  Mississippi.  If  the  people  in  Ten- 
nessee Williams'  plays  were  regarded  as  products 
of  the  author's  imagination,  his  plays  would  lose 
all  their  interest. /There  is  always  a  point  in  any 
one  of  Williams'  dramas  where  recognition  gives 
way  to  a  feeling  of  shocked  incredulity;  this 
shock  technique  is  the  source  of  his  sensational 
popularity.  But  the  audience  would  not  be  elec- 
trified il  it  had  not  been  persuaded  earlier  that  it 
was  witnessing  something  the  author  vouched  for 
as  a  common,  ordinary  occurrence  in  the  Amer- 
ican South. 

Unlike  the  other  playwrights,  who  make  a 
journalistic  claim  to  neutral  recording,  Arthur 
Miller  admittedly  has  a  message.  His  first  Broad- 
way success.  All  My  Sons,,  was  a  social  indictment 
taken,  almost  directly,  from  Ibsen's  Pillars  of 
Society.  The  coffin  ships,  rotten,  unseaworthy 
vessels  calked  over  to  give  an  appearance  of 
soundness,  became  defective  airplanes  sold  to  the 
government  by  a  corner-cutting  manufacturer 
during  the  second  world  war;  like  the  coffin  ships, 
the  airplanes  are  a  symbol  of  the  inner  rottenness 
of  bourgeois  society,  and  the  sins  of  the  lather 
are  visited  on  the  son,  a  pilot  who  cracks  up  in 
the  Pacific  theatre  (in  Ibsen,  the  ship-owner's 
boy  is  saved  at  the  last  minute  from  sailing  on 
The  Indian  Girl). 

The  insistence  of  this  symbol  and  the  vague- 
ness or  absence  of  concrete  detail  express  Miller's 
impatience  with  the  particular  and  his  feeling 
that  his  play  ought  to  say  "more"  than  it  ap- 
pears to  be  saying.  Ibsen,  even  in  his  later, 
symbolic  works,  was  always  specific  about  the 
where,  when,  and  how  of  his  histories,  but  Miller 
has  always  regarded  the  specific  as  trivial  and  has 
sought,  from  the  very  outset,  a  hollow,  reverber- 
ant universality.  The  reluctance  to  awaken  a 
specific  recognition,  for  fear  that  a  larger  mean- 
ing might  go  unrecognized  by  the  public,  grew 
on  Miller  with  Death  of  a  Salesman— sl  strong 
and  original  conception  that  was  enfeebled  by 
its  creator's  insistence  on  universality  and  by  a 
too-hortatory  excitement,  i.e.,  an  eagerness  to 
preach,  which  is  really  another  form  of  the  same 
thing.  Miller  was  bent  on  making  his  Salesman 
(as  he  calls  him)  a  parable  of  Everyman,  exactly 
as  in  a  clergyman's  sermon,  so  that  the  drama 
has  only  the  quality— and  something  of  the 
canting  tone— of  an  illustrative  moral  example. 

The  thirst  for  universality  becomes  even  more 
imperious  in  A  View  from  the  Bridge,  where  the 
account  of  a  waterfront  killing  that  Miller  read 


52 


"REALISM"     IN     THE     THEATRE 


in  a  newspaper  is  accessorized  with  Greek  archi- 
tecture, "archetypes,"  and,  from  time  to  time, 
intoned  passages  of  verse,  and  Miller  announces 
in  a  preface  that  he  is  not  interested  in  his  hero's 
"psychology."  Miller  does  not  understand  that 
you  cannot  turn  a  newspaper  item  about  Italian 
longshoremen  and  illegal  immigration  into  a 
Greek  play  by  adding  a  chorus  and  the  pediment 
of  a  temple.  Throughout  Miller's  long  practice 
as  a  realist,  there  is  not  only  a  naive  searching 
for  another  dimension  but  an  evident  hatred  of 
and  contempt  for  reality— as  not  good  enough  to 
make  plays  out  of. 

It  is  natixral,  therefore,  that  he  should  never 
have  had  any  interest  in  how  people  talk;  his 
characters  all  talk  the  same  way— somewhat 
funereally,  through  their  noses.  A  live  sense  of 
speech  differences  (think  of  Shaw's  Pygmalion) 
is  rare  in  American  playwrights;  O'Neill  tried 
to  cultivate  it  ("dat  ol'  davil  sea"),  but  he  could 
never  do  more  than  write  perfimctory  dialect, 
rather  like  that  of  somebody  telling  a  Pat  and 
Mike  story  or  a  mountaineer  joke.  The  only 
American  realist  with  an  ear  for  speech,  aside 
from  Chayefsky,  whose  range  is  narrow,  is  Ten- 
nessee Williams.  He  does  really  hear  his  char- 
acters, especially  his  female  characters;  he  has 
studied  their  speech  patterns  and,  like  Professor 
Higgins,  he  can  tell  where  they  come  from; 
Williams  too  is  the  only  realist  who  places  his 
characters  in  social  history.  Of  all  the  realists, 
after  O'Neill,  he  has  probably  the  greatest  native 
gift  for  the  theatre;  he  is  a  natural  performer 
and  comedian,  and  it  is  too  bad  that  he  suffers 
from  the  inferiority  complex  that  is  the  curse  of 
recent  American  realists— the  sense  that  a  play 
must  be  bigger  than   its  characters. 

This  is  really  a  social  disease— a  fear  of  being 
underrated— rather  than  the  claustrophobia  of 
the  medium  itself,  which  tormented  Ibsen  and 
O'Neill.  But  it  goes  back  to  the  same  source: 
the  depreciation  of  the  real.  Real  speech,  for 
example,  is  not  good  enough  for  Williams  and 
from  time  to  time  he  silences  his  characters  to 
put  on  a  phonograph  record  of  his  special  poetic 
long-play  prose. 

Williams'    critters 

AL  L  dramatic  realism  is  somewhat  sadistic; 
an  audience  is  persuaded  to  watch  some- 
thing that  makes  it  uncomfortable  and  from 
which  no  relief  is  offered— no  laughter,  no  tears, 
no  purgation.  This  sadism  had  a  moral  justifica- 
tion, so  long  as  there  was  the  question  of  the 
exposure  of  a  lie.    But  Williams  is  fascinated  by 


the  refinements  of  cruelty,  which  with  him  be- 
come a  form  of  aestheticism,  and  his  plays,  far 
from  baring  a  lie  that  society  is  trying  to  cover 
up,  titillate  society  like  a  peep  show.  The  cur- 
tain is  ripped  off,  to  disclose,  not  a  drab  scene  of 
ordinary  life,  but  a  sadistic  exhibition  of  the 
kind  certain  rather  specialized  tourists  ])ay  to 
see  in  big  cities  like  New  Orleans.  With  Wil- 
liams, it  is  always  a  case  of  watching  some  mangy 
cat  on  a  hot  tin  roof.  The  ungratified  sexual  or- 
gan of  an  old  maid,  a  yoimg  wife  married  to  a 
homosexual,  a  subnormal  poor  white  farmer  is 
proffered  to  the  audience  as  a  curiosity. 

The  withholding  of  sexual  gratification  from  a 
creature  or  "critter"  in  heat  for  three  long  acts 
is  Williams'  central  device;  other  forms  of  tor- 
ture to  which  these  poor  critters  are  subjected 
are  hysterectomy  and  castration.  Nobody,  not 
even  the  SPCA,  would  argue  that  it  was  a  good 
thing  to  show  the  prolonged  torture  of  a  dumb 
animal  on  the  stage,  even  though  the  torture 
were  only  simulated  and  animals,  in  the  end, 
would  profit  from  such  cases'  being  brought  to 
light.  Yet  this,  on  a  human  level,  is  Tennessee 
Williams'  realism— a^  cat,  to  repeat,  on  a  hot  tin 
roof.  And,  in  a  milder  version,  it  is  found  again 
in  William  Inge's  Picnic. 

No  one  could  have  prophesied,  a  hundred 
years  ago,  that  the  moral  doctrine  of  realism 
would  narrow  to  the  point  of  becoming  pornog- 
raphy, yet  something  like  that  seems  to  be  hap- 
pening with  such  realistic  novels  as  Peyton  Place 
and  the  later  John  O'Hara  and  with  one  branch 
of  the  realist  theatre.  Realism  seems  to  be  a 
highly  unstable  mode,  attracted  on  the  one  hand 
to  the  higher,  on  the  other  to  the  lower  elements 
in  the  human  scale,  tending  always  to  proceed 
toward  its  opposite,  that  is,  to  irreality,  tracing  a 
vicious  circle  from  which  it  can  escape  only  by 
repudiating  itself. 

Realism,  in  short,  is  forever  begging  the  ques- 
tion—the question  of  reality.  To  find  the  ideal 
realist,  you  would  first  have  to  find  reality.  And 
if  no  dramatist  today,  except  O'Neill,  can  accept 
being  a  realist  in  its  full  implications,  this  is 
perhaps  because  of  lack  of  courage.  Ibsen  and 
O'Neill,  with  all  their  dissatisfaction,  produced 
major  works  in  the  full  realist  vein;  the  recent 
realists  get  discouraged  after  a  single  effort.  Street 
Scene;  All  My  Sons;  The  Glass  Menagerie;  Come 
Back,  Little  Sheba;  Middle  of  the  Night;  perhaps 
Awake  and  Sing  are  the  only  convincing  evidence 
that  exists  of  an  American  realist  school— not 
counting  O'Neill.  If  I  add  Vk'ath  of  a  Salesman 
and  A  Streetcar  Named  Desire,  it  is  only  because 
I  do  not  know  where  else  to  put  thein. 

Harper's  Magazine,  July  1961 


MIRIAM    CHAPIN 


Quebec's  Revolt 

against  the 
Catholic  Schools 


New  voices — clerical  and  anticlerical — are 

shaking  French  Canada's  educational  system  .  .  . 

and  demanding  change  in  its  tradition-bound 

ways  of  living,  thinking,  and  teaching. 

AF  R  I  E  N  D  of  mine  whom  I  shall  call 
Marline  came  to  lunch  with  me  one  day 
last  week.  She  is  a  bright  and  well-informed 
French  Canadian  whose  husband  teaches  at  the 
University  of  Montreal,  not  far  from  my  home. 
She  herself  attended  one  of  the  few  girls'  classical 
colleges,  and  took  some  university  training  in  so- 
cial service  work.  She  married  Jean-Paul  at 
twenty-two,  younger  than  most  French  Canadian 
girls  marry,  and  she  has  three  sons.  She  remarked 
firmly  one  day  that  she  wanted  no  more  children, 
and  when  I  raised  an  inquiring  eyebrow,  she 
said,  "I  don't  have  to  confess  everything  I  do  to 
the  priest." 

Her  oldest  boy  is  just  beginning  his  classical 


course  under  the  Jesuits,  at  eleven.  It  was  of  the 
second  one,  eight  years  old,  still  in  public  school 
(French  and  Catholic,  of  course)  near  home,  that 
she  began  talking. 

"He  is  so  nervous.  I  just  don't  know  what  to 
do  with  him.  I  wish  his  teachers  wouldn't  put  so 
much  emphasis  on  the  catechism  and  all  that. 
He  keeps  asking  if  he  has  to  go  to  purgatory  and 
he  cries  and  has  nightmares  about  the  martyrs 
that  they  burned  and  shot  with  arrows,  and 
about  the  Crucifixion.  He  is  too  sensitive.  The 
other  children  don't  seem  to  worry  like  that. 
Jean-Paul  says  if  he  is  so  unhappy  maybe  we 
ought  to  send  him  to  a  Protestant  English  school, 
but  we'd  have  to  say  we're  Protestants  and  we're 
not.  We're  French  Canadian  Catholics  and  so  is 
he,  and  we  want  him  to  grow  up  in  his  own 
milieu— you  know  what  I  mean.  Maybe  an 
English  private  school?  But  then  he'd  still  be 
apart  from  his  own  people.  I  guess  the  only 
way  is  to  make  our  schools  change— but  that  takes 
so  long." 

We  were  speaking  English,  as  we  usually  do, 
but  then  she  switched  to  French,  so  I  knew  she 
was  deeply  concerned  and  thinking  out  loud.  "It 
would  be  hard  to  take  him  out  of  the  Catholic 
school,  for  one  reason  because  Jean-Paul's  father 
loves  our  children  so,  and  would  feel  so  grieved. 
He  is,  well,  a  darling,  but  a  little  bit  old- 
fashioned.  He  thinks  I  ought  to  be  more  strict 
with  the  children.  He  even  doesn't  like  it  at  all 
that  the  Cardinal  has  relaxed  the  hours  for  fast- 
ing before  mass— he  says  he's  always  fasted  twelve 
hours  and  he  always  will.  For  me,  I've  never 
bothered  much.  You've  seen  me  eat  meat  on 
Friday  lots  of  times—"  she  smiled  at  me.  "But 
even  though  I'm  careless,  I  don't  want  to  give  up 
my  religion,  it's  a  comfort  to  me  in  trouble.  Jean- 
Paul  feels  the  same  as  I  do.  It's  our  way  of  life. 
But  I  signed  the  petition." 

"Petition?"  I  said  vaguely. 

"Yes,  you  know,  the  petition  eight  hundred 
women  signed— imagine,  eight  hundred  of  us— 
asking  the  Provincial  Government  to  give  us  free 
public  schools  run  by  the  Government.  We  want 
a  Ministry  to  run  the  schools,  not  the  clergy.  But 
I  don't  want  to  get  rid  of  the  Church,  I  truly 
don't.  I  just  want  them  to  mind  their  own  busi- 
ness." 

I  was  startled  to  see  tears  in  the  eyes  of  my  gay, 
worldly  friend.  It  came  to  me  how  rending  to 
luany  French  Canadians  is  this  present  "crisis  of 
anticlericalism,"  as  the  Church  calls  it.  They  are 
a  religious  people,  in  spite  of  their  frequent  ir- 
reverent jokes  and  blasphemy.  Their  Church  has 
stood  for  more  than  three  centuries  as  defender 


54 


QUEBEC'S     REVOLT 


of  their  language  and  their  national  life  against 
the  hostile  English-speaking  world  around  them. 
It  consecrates  the  rites  that  mark  the  stages 
of  their  lives,  christening,  first  communion,  mar- 
riage, and  burial.  Nuns  and  priests  have  come 
from  their  families,  though  now  they  are  mostly 
from  the  generation  over  forty. 

It  is  curious  that  many  Americans  were 
worried  lest  a  Catholic  President  might  facilitate 
Catholic  control  of  American  schools,  while  in 
next-door  Quebec  anticlericals  who  are  them- 
selves Catholics  in  good  standing  are  trying  to 
put  laymen  in  control  of  theirs.  A  few  of  the 
Church's  opponents  are  of  course  atheists  and 
anti-Church  as  well  as  anticlerical,  but  they  are 
not  the  most  influential.  There  are  all  shades  of 
opinion,  and  all  are  being  loudly  expressed— 
which  itself  is  a  new  thing  in  Quebec.  Not  since 
the  1890s,  when  school  reform  came  close  to  be- 
ing achieved,  has  there  been  such  outspoken 
criticism  of  the  clergy. 

A     VOICE     OF     DISQUIET 

AT  BASE,  the  ferment  is  due  to  the  tre- 
mendous change  in  Quebec's  social  struc- 
ture in  the  past  twenty  years,  its  vast  industrial 
development,  its  urbanization.  Now,  hardly  a 
fifth  of  the  population  lives  on  the  farms.  The 
cities  bulge,  the  suburbs  spread,  the  slums  blight 
I  he  centers.  Practically  all  city  French  Canadians 
are  bilingual.  They  have  to  be,  though  English 
Canadians  arc  recognizing  the  need  to  speak 
French  and  are  making  progress  at  it.  Quebec 
has  been  pitchforked  into  the  modern  world. 
Women  leave  their  homes  to  work,  to  run  their 
own  businesses,  to  teach  in  the  university,  and  to 
be  jomnalists  and  lawyers  and  doctors  and  what 
they  please.  In  some  ways  French  Canadian 
women  are  more  emancipated  than  English 
Canadian  women.  They  speak  up  loud  and  clear 
in  politics.  The  widow  of  former  Premier  Sauve 
has  just  been  chosen  Quebec  Conservative  leader, 
and  she  is  no  figurehead. 

Some  people  in  the  Province  want  a  separate 
national  Quebec,  but  most  French  Canadians, 
feeling  a  new  pride  in  their  country,  simply  want 
to  be  recognized  as  first-class  Canadians.  They 
are  not  French  and  don't  want  to  be.  They  want 
to  control  their  own  Province,  and  they  resent 
the  economic  hold  of  English,  English  Canadians, 
and  now  Americans  on  their  mines  and  forests 
and  factories.  To  take  their  rightful  place  in 
Canadian  and  North  American  life,  they  believe 
better  education  is  the  first  essential,  and  that 
includes  political  education. 


An  important  force  in  the  upheaval  has  been 
a  small  monthly  magazine  called  Cite  Lihre, 
which  can  be  conventionally  described  as  left- 
wing  Catholic.  It  has  been  published  for  ten 
years  now,  growing  slowly  in  size  and  circidation, 
with  an  influence  out  of  proportion  to  the  num- 
ber of  its  subscribers.  Edited  by  French  Cana- 
dians, some  of  whom  have  degrees  from  Harvard 
and  London  as  well  as  the  Sorbonne,  it  has  given 
a  voice  to  the  disquiet  of  the  intellectuals  at  the 
corruption  of  politics,  the  failures  of  the  schools, 
the  bankruptcy  of  clerical  leadership  in  too  many 
cases.  One  of  its  former  contributors  became 
Minister  of  Public  Works  in  the  present  Pro- 
vincial Cabinet,  and  set  in  motion  some 
drastic  reforms.  Citr  Lihre  has  shocked  and 
angered  many  people,  but  it  has  been  an  oasis  of 
free  speech. 

Among  the  signs  of  a  new  realistic  attitude  to 
the  Church  is  the  decision  of  the  "Catholic 
Syndicates"  to  drop  the  word  "Catholic"  from 
their  name,  becoming  "National"  unions  instead. 
Another  straw  in  the  wind  was  the  remark  made 
to  a  young  novelist  after  the  publication  of  her 
first  book.  "It  would  have  had  better  reviews  if 
it  hadn't  been 'sponsored  by  a  priest."  When  a 
bishop  in  Gasped  advised  the  hospitals  in  his 
diocese  about  the  conditions  under  which  the 
nuns  who  run  them  should  sign  up  for  the  na- 
tional health-insurance  plan,  and  so  caused  de- 
lay, he  was  slapped  down  in  the  Quebec  Parlia- 
ment by  the  deputy  from  his  constituency,  and 
told  to  "take  account  of  his  role." 

Such  irreverence  would  have  been  inconceiv- 
able a   few  years  ago. 

The  widespread  discontent  comes  to  a  focus 
on  the  public  schools.  Run  by  the  clergy  since 
Quebec  was  first  settled,  they  have  educated 
priests  and  lawyers,  but  far  too  few  of  the  men 
and  women  Quebec  has  long  needed— the  en- 
gineers, chemists,  physicists,  biologists,  business- 
men, economists,  bankers,  all  the  technicians  of 
our  industrial  society.  They  prepare  for  life  no- 
where except  in  Quebec,  and  not  very  well  for 
that.  The  structure  of  the  system  has  hardly 
changed  since  1875.  The  Provincial  Government 
controls  only  the  sixty-odd  technical  schools, 
agriculture,  apprenticeship,  handicraft,  and  the 


Miriam  Chapin  has  known  Montreal  for  nearly 
thirty  years  and  reported  on  Canadian  affairs  in 
many  American  magazines.  She  now  spends  ivinters 
there  and  summers  in  Vermont,  thirty  miles  from 
her  childhood  home.  The  most  recent  of  her  four 
books  is  "Contemporary  Canada"  (published  in 
1959  by  the  Oxford  University  Press). 


BY     MIRIAM     CHAPIN 


55 


like.  For  the  rest,  it  appoints  a  Council  of  Pub- 
lic Instruction,  composed  of  a  Catholic  and  a 
Protestant  Committee,  who  have  met  together 
once  in  fifty  years. 

Half  the  Catholic  Committee  must  be  bishops 
and  archbishops.  They  hold  office  for  life, 
supreme  over  the  million  Catholic  schoolchildren 
of  Quebec,  four-fifths  of  the  Provincial  school 
population.  They  lay  out  the  course  of  study, 
approve  the  textbooks  largely  written  to  their 
specifications,  set  the  qualifications  for  teachers. 
What  they  have  given  the  Province  is  the  "con- 
fessional" school,  the  school  so  soaked  in  Catholi- 
cism that  even  problems  in  arithmetic  add  num- 
bers of  angels  or  lay  out  building  plans  for 
churches.  History  is  disproportionately  concerned 
with  Quebec's  colonial  days  and  nationalist 
struggle;  much  of  the  reading  is  devotional; 
while  an  hour  or  more  a  day  is  given  over  to 
prayer  and  catechism.  Many  of  the  teachers 
come  from  some  religious  order,  and  work  for 
lower  pay  than  the  lay  teachers,  who  naturally 
resent  that  situation.  Many  teachers  have  never 
been  out  of  Canada;  almost  all  come  from 
Quebec  itself.  Far  too  many  pupils,  bored  and 
rebellious,  drop  out  at  fourteen  to  take  some 
dreary  factory  job,  and  in  bad  times  they  make 
up  the  lines  of  unemployed. 

Until  1942  attendance  at  school  was  not  com- 
pulsory, because  the  doctrine  of  the  Church  is 
that  education  must  be  a  matter  for  parents  and 
clergy;  the  state  has  no  right  to  interfere.  But 
the  state  has  had  to  interfere  more  and  more, 
with  grants  and  subsidies  and  the  assumption  of 
local  school-commission  debts,  because  the  real- 
estate  taxes  which  were  once  supposed  to  support 
the  schools  are  so  painfully  insufficient.  The  De- 
partment of  Public  Instruction  within  the  Pro- 
vincial Government  sends  inspectors  to  the 
schools,  runs  normal  schools,  approves  school 
construction,  and  other  things,  but  it  is  sub- 
ordinate to  the  Council  of  Public  Instruction. 
If  there  were  a  real  Ministry  of  Education,  the 
Council  would  be  reduced  to  an  advisory  func- 
tion. As  of  now,  voters  have  little  or  no  say  about 
the  education  their  children  get. 

The  stronghold  of  the  Church  is  the  classical 
college.  There  are  sixty  of  them,  fifteen  for  girls, 
all  but  one  run  by  religious  orders  such  as  the 
Jesuits,  Sulpicians,  Clercs  de  St.  Viateur,  and  so 
on,  or  by  the  hierarchy  of  a  diocese.  A  boy  enters 
at  eleven  or  twelve  for  an  eight-year  course  in 
Greek,  Latin,  English,  French  literature,  rhetoric 
(every  educated  French  Canadian  is  expected  to 
be  a  polished  speaker),  versification,  mathematics, 
philosophy,  with  precious  little  science.    Orders 


of  nuns  run  the  colleges  for  girls.  A  few 
girls  go  to  the  fashionable  convents.  A  French 
Canadian  visitor  recently  wrote  of  a  visit  to  an 
Ursuline  convent,  "It  is  stuck  in  the  Middle  Ages. 
For  the  pupils,  religion  seems  reduced  to  the 
morality  which  is  taught  them.  It  stinks  in  their 
noses,  and  so  does  religion.  They  will  abandon 
it  when  they  leave." 

When  a  boy  graduates  from  classical  college, 
he  receives  a  degree  granted  by  the  university, 
the  "baccalaureate."  It  means  nothing  outside 
Quebec.  There,  it  admits  him  to  the  university 
for  three  years  of  law,  medicine,  or  arts.  Until 
ten  years  ago  a  boy  whose  family  could  not  pay 
the  tuition  and  board  charged  by  a  classical  col- 
lege found  his  way  barred  to  the  university. 
While  fees  are  not  high,  they  make  a  heavy 
burden  for  a  family  with  three  or  four  children 
to  educate  at  a  time.  After  the  war,  rude 
democracy  crept  in,  and  the  school  commissions 
were  forced  to  open  some  high  schools,  all  too 
few.  Now  nearly  half  the  university  students 
come  from  that  background,  and  the  universi- 
ties have  to  provide  undergraduate  courses  for 
them. 

The  system  is  still  awkwardly  adapted  to  these 
exigencies,  and  the  whole  field  of  secondary  edu- 
cation is  in  a  state  of  general  confusion.  It  was 
designed  to  form  an  elite  and  concerned  itself 
not  at  all  with  the  proletarian  mass.  The  push 
from  below  sends  it  into  a  dither.  Shall  the 
classical  colleges  become  public  schools?  Shall 
more  bursaries  (scholarships)  be  given?  Who 
shall  teach  what?  An  Irish  Catholic  who  worked 
for  the  Montreal  School  Commission  (Irish 
Catholics  always  have  at  least  one  representative 
on  the  Catholic  Commission,  but  they  never 
think  they  get  a  fair  deal  from  the  French 
majority)  said  to  me  years  ago,  "The  French'll 
be  chasing  those  Brothers  of  theirs  down  the  street 
with  rocks  one  of  these  days.    You'll  see." 

BY     BROTHER     SO-AND-SO 

NOW  the  Church  is  under  attack  from  the 
teaching  Brothers  themselves,  those  hum- 
blest of  all  the  clergy.  The  sensation  of  the 
winter  was  a  thin  paperback,  Les  Insolences  du 
Frere  Untel  (Brother  So-and-so),  which  sold  more 
than  100,000  copies.  Written  by  a  Marist  Brother, 
published  without  the  impnmat\ir,  the  nihil 
obstat  of  the  Church,  it  is  a  harsh  arraignment 
of  the  Church's  schools  and  of  the  Church  itself, 
by  a  young  man  who  writes  poetically  of  the  love 
and  devotion  he  offers  to  the  Virgin  Mary,  who 
declares  that  he  is  in  and  of  the  Church,  that  he 


56  QUEBEC'S     REVOLT 

will  remain  all  his  life  in  the  order  whose  vows 
he  took. 

From  that  background  he  talks  of  the  bad 
teaching  in  the  schools,  the  abominable  French 
that  is  spoken  by  both  teachers  and  pupils,  the 
atmosphere  of  fear  that  pervades  the  educational 
system.  He  says,  "Historically  our  Catholicism 
is  Counter  Reformation.  Add  to  that  the  Protes- 
tant Conquest  .  .  ."  (He  means  the  English  con- 
quest of  Quebec  since  1763,  never  forgotten  by 
French  Canadians.)  "And  you  have  our  Catholi- 
cism—shriveled, timid,  ignorant,  reduced  to  a 
sexual  morality,  and  negative  at  that."  His 
superior  backed  him  up,  saying,  "We  have  raised 
enough  sheep,  it's  time  we  raised  some  shep- 
herds." 

The  discussion  since  has  been  unprecedented 
at  all  levels.  A  French  Canadian  who  sends  his 
children  to  an  English  Canadian  private  school 
told  me,  "I  don't  want  to.  French  is  part  of  their 
heritage,  and  I  am  cheating  them  out  of  it,  at 
least  partly.  But  I  can't  stand  the  prayers  any 
longer,  and  the  constant  demand  for  complete 
submission  to  authority."  A  rather  uneducated 
woman  said  to  me,  voicing  a  point  of  view  I 
hadn't  heard  elsewhere,  "We've  got  to  do  some- 
thing. All  these  immigrants  coming  in  have  so 
much  better  education  than  our  boys,  they're 
grabbing  all  the  good  jobs."  It  is  true  that 
Montreal  is  now  a  tenth  European. 

An  editor  of  Lc  Devoir,  Montreal  daily,  com- 
plained that  so  many  of  the  letters  pouring  in 
about  the  schools  demanded  anonymity.  "Why 
all  this  fear?"  he  asked.  One  of  the  unsigned 
missives  spoke  of  the  conspiracy  of  silence  which 
reigns  about  education  at  all  stages,  "as  if  the 
expression  of  a  legitimate  discontent  would  shake 
the  Church."  But  that  is  just  the  trouble;  it 
does.  Church  and  School  are  inseparable.  An 
old  bishop  summed  up  the  dread  that  besets  him 
and  his  colleagues  when  he  blurted,  "How  can 
we  recruit  young  men  for  the  priesthood  if  we 
do  not  control  the  schools?" 

According  to  Paul-Emile  Cardinal  Leger,  Arch- 
bishop of  Montreal,  Quebec  lacks  five  himdred 
priests;  he  could  place  that  many  at  once  if  he 
had  them.  They  are  not  forthcoming,  in  a  Prov- 
ince where  it  used  to  be  the  pride  of  every 
Catholic  family  to  give  at  least  one  son  to  the 
Church.  So  while  the  wave  of  criticism  flows 
ovei"  the  schools,  it  laps  at  the  foundations  of  the 
Church  itself.  I  was  taken  aback  one  day  when  I 
asked  the  opinion  of  an  older  woman  whom  I 
h'dxc  long  known  as  devout,  obedient  to  the 
Church's  rules  and  genuinely  loyal.  She  said 
unhappily  and  very  seriously,  "It  is  Loo  bad  we 


had  no  share  in  the  French  Revolution  here.  The 
Church  in  France  [where  she  spends  her  sum- 
mers] is  far  more  enlightened  than  ours,  more 
liberal,  more  intelligent,  more  beloved.  I  am 
afraid  of  what  is  coming  here." 


I 


THE     JESUITS     LOOK     AHEAD 

N    THE  midst   of  the  commotion   over  the 

lower  schools— the  demands  for  less  religion 
and  more  practical  instruction— the  Jesuits  chose 
the  moment  to  toss  a  few  buckets  of  gasoline  on 
another  inflammable  spot.  The  French-speaking 
Jesuits  want  to  combine  two  classical  colleges  in 
Montreal,  add  a  few  advanced  courses,  and  get  a 
university  charter  from  the  Government  for  the 
product.  The  Irish  Jesuits  want  to  raise  to  uni- 
versity status  their  Loyola  College  in  Montreal, 
which  is  now  more  like  a  small  American  de- 
nominational college  than  like  the  Quebec 
classical  variety. 

Quebec  has  three  French-speaking  universities 
—Montreal,  Laval,  and  Shcrbrooke— and  three 
English-speaking  on^s.  All  except  McGill  are 
gasping  for  funds;  they  are  privately  endowed 
to  begin  with,  but  they  survive  on  Federal  and 
Provincial  grants.  The  University  of  Montreal 
set  up  a  howl  at  the  Jesuit  proposal,  and  its 
professors  issued  a  paperback.  The  University 
sny.s  NO  to  the  Jesuits.  They  said  such  new  in- 
stitutions would  draw  off  some  of  their  best 
teachers,  too  many  of  whom  head  for  the  higher 
salaries  south  of  the  border  anyhow,  and  would 
doom  all  the  universities  to  mediocrity.  What 
most  of  those  protesting  really  want  is  a  univer- 
sity run  by  laymen— all  the  present  French-speak- 
ing ones  are  imder  the  Church— free  of  clerical 
domination,  free  to  discuss  anything  they  choose, 
free  to  pursue  research  wherever  it  leads.  Ob- 
viously, granting  two  new  charters  to  the  Jesuits 
would  stymie  any  such  project  for  years  to  come. 
Besides,  the  Jesuit  move  has  stimidated  several 
small  cities  to  dream  of  making  their  classical 
colleges  into  universities.  Trois  Rivieres  has  even 
ajjplied  to  Parliament  for  a  charter.  Such  whole- 
sale creation  of  universities  would  end  by  mak- 
ing ihc  title  pretty  meaningless. 

The  Jesuits  say  that  in  ten  years  new  univer- 
sities will  be  needed  for  Quebec's  growing  popu- 
lation, that  students  from  f)ihcr  Provinces  who 
now  have  to  attend  non-Catholi(  universities  will 
be  glad  to  come  to  Quebec.  French  communities 
in  all  Canadian  Provinces  want  their  own  schools, 
and  some  have  them,  but  each  Province  deals 
\viih  education  irulcj^endcniiy.  and  they  vary 
widely  in  the  way  they  treat  tlie  French  minori- 


57 


ties.  The  Jesuits  believe  now  is 
the  time  to  prepare  to  gather  in 
both  English  and  French  from  out- 
side Quebec,  and  to  take  care  of 
the  boys  now  in  lower  schools. 

In  Montreal  I  talked  with 
Father  Gerard  Plante,  who  is  Di- 
rector of  Studies  for  all  the  Jesuit 
colleges  in  Canada.  "Lay  teach- 
ers?" he  said.  "But  why  not? 
We  have  them  now.  We  need  the 
university  charter  for  the  progress 
of  education  in  Quebec.  We  need 
it  to  meet  the  fast-growing  re- 
quirements of  French  Canadian 
society."  He  spoke  with  en- 
thusiasm and  conviction. 

Other  Jesuits  cite  their  vast 
experience  in  education,  their 
learned  doctors— whose  doctorates 
are  usually  in  the  humanities,  a 
field  where  no  Catholic  would 
dispute  their  competence.  But  it 
is  science  that  Quebec  pants  for.  The  Montreal 
English  newspapers  support  the  Irish  campaign 
to  make  Loyola  a  university— which  does  it  no 
good  at  all  with  French  Canadians.  The  Quebec 
Government  has  put  off  its  decision  until  a  Royal 
Commission  on  Education  which  it  has  ap- 
pointed can  report  next  year.  Quebec  is  in  for 
a  year  or  more  of  polemics. 

ANYTHING     BUT     NEUTRAL 

THESE  arguments  have  become  political 
issues— as  do  most  things  in  Quebec.  The 
remnants  of  the  late  Premier  Duplessis'  party, 
now  in  opposition  to  the  Liberals  who  won  last 
June's  election,  accuse  the  Government  of 
Premier  Jean  Lesage  of  wishing  to  betray  the 
Church,  of  plotting  to  do  away  with  the  confes- 
sional school.  A  lot  of  his  followers  undoubtedly 
do  want  to,  but  their  leaders  stoutly  deny  the 
imputation.  After  all,  the  Church  still  carries  a 
lot  of  weight  at  election  time. 

So  the  Government  protests  that  it  reveres  the 
confessional  school,  that  it  will  never  never  never 
appoint  a  Minister  of  Education,  that  it  abhors 
the  neutral  school  like  the  public  school  in  the 
United  States.  But  the  moves  that  it  is  making, 
the  extension  of  compulsory  attendance  through 
the  ninth  year  (with  the  Cardinal's  assent),  the 
provision  of  stricter  teacher  training,  of  more 
scientific  courses,  the  promise  of  free  tuition- 
even  through  university  some  day— the  plans  for 
regional  secondary  schools  with  "mixed"  classes. 


Willard  Goodman 

where  boys  and  girls  study  together,  all  tip  the 
balance  toward  state  control.  Since  Government 
pays  the  piper,  it  will  some  day  call  the  tune.  It 
appeals  strongly  to  the  renascent  nationalist 
movement  in  Quebec,  when  it  points  out  that 
in  order  to  survive  in  our  world,  French  Cana- 
dians  must  have   the  best   education   available. 

A  laymen's  association  to  promote  the  non- 
confessional  school  has  been  organized,  with  some 
respected  leaders  and  considerable  enthusiasm. 
It  would  abolish  religious  entrance  requirements, 
and  open  the  doors  to  French-speaking  Jews, 
French  Protestants,  nonbelievers.  The  first  meet- 
ing of  the  "Mouvement  laic  de  langue  fran^aise" 
brought  together  six  hundred  persons.  One 
speaker  deplored  the  feeling  of  guilt,  the  belief 
in  original  sin  which  the  schools  impress  on 
children's  minds.  An  attack  on  religious  teach- 
ing on  these  grounds  instead  of  on  those  of 
expediency  would  make  the  controversy  fiercer 
and  extend  it  to  the  Protestant  schools  as  well. 
As  Pierre  Trudeau,  one  of  the  editors  of  Cite 
Libre,  remarked  to  me  after  that  meeting,  in  a 
slangy  French  phrase  hard  to  put  in  English,  "I 
think  we  shook  out  the  rivets." 

The  university  students,  who  know  by  recent 
experience  what  the  confessional  school  is  like, 
are  taking  an  active  part  in  the  fight  to  laicize 
education.  The  student  magazine  at  the  Univer- 
sity of  Montreal,  Le  Qiinrtier  Latin,  headed  a 
biting  editorial  addressed  to  the  clergy  of  Quebec, 
"C'est  le  peiiple  a  geiioux  qui  releve  la  tete": 
"The  Kneeling  People  Lift  Their  Heads." 


Harper's  Magazine,  July  1961 


^^The  Footnote-and-mouth  disease 


ny 


HELENE    HANFF 

On  the  strength  of  a  Grant-in-Aid  from  CBS, 

a  television  writer  for  the  Hallmark  "Hall  of 

Fame,"  "Ellery  Queen,"  and  other  popular  story 

programs,  dives  bravely  into  the  maelstrom  of 

Recognized  Sources  and  Bibliographic  Research. 

AW  OMAN  comes  home  from  an  after- 
noon bridge  game  and  says  to  her  hus- 
band: "Floss  is  definitely  leaving  Joe."  Her 
husband  says:    "Who  told  you?" 

"Mabel." 

"Where'd  Mabel  hear  it?" 

"Lucy  told  her." 

"Who  told  Lucy?" 

"I  don't  know." 

Her  husband  looks  unconvinced,  so  she  adds: 
"It  must  be  true,  it's  all  over  town!" 

In  social  circles,  this  method  of  conveying  in- 
formation is  known  as  Gossip.  In  academic  circles 
it's  known  as  Historical  Resc;uch.  I  will  tell  you 
how  you  find  this  out. 

You're  a  writer.  As  part  of  a  TV  project, 
you're  doing  research  on  the  Alien  and  Sedition 
Acts.  Which  is  why,  one  rainy  winter  evening, 
you're  lying  on  the  sofa  with  your  shoes  off,  read- 
ing the  Congressional  Record  for  1798.  You  come 
upon  a  si/zling  speech  delivered  by  a  Congress- 
man from  New  York  named  Edward  Livingston. 


You  think  you  may  need  him  in  the  TV  script. 

Accordingly,  next»  morning,  you  go  down  to 
the  Public  Library  to  look  up  the  life  of  Edward 
Livingston.  You  consult  first— de  rigueur— the 
Dictionary  of  American  Biography,  published  un- 
der the  auspices  of  the  American  Council  of 
Learned  Societies  and  known  in  historical  re- 
search as  The  Bible.  Hereinafter  referred  to  as 
the  D.A.B. 

In  the  D.A.B.  account  of  Livingston's  life,  you 
read:  "In  1782  he  began  the  study  of  law  at 
Albany  in  the  office  of  John  Lansing  [q-v.]  where 
he  found  as  fellow  students  Alexander  Hamilton, 
Aaron  Burr,  and  James  Kent." 

("Floss  is  definitely  leaving  Joe.") 

("Who  told  youf") 

The  most  recent  book  on  the  subject  is  Edward 
Livingston,  Jeffersonian  Republican  and  Jack- 
sonion  Democrat,  by  W.  B.   Hatcher. 

("Mabel") 

You  get  Hatcher  off  the  shelf.  Hatcher  says 
Livingston  studied  law  in  Albany  with  John 
Lansing.  "Here  he  was  thrown  into  intimate 
contact  with  such  brilliant  legal  minds  as  Alex- 
ander Hamilton,  Aaron  Burr,  and  James  Kent." 

("Where'd  Mabel  hear  it?") 

Hatcher's  bibliography  directs  you  to  the  Life 
of  Edward  Livirigston  by  C.  H.  Hunt. 

("Lucy  told  her.") 

You  consult  Hunt.  Hunt  says  that  Hamilton, 
Burr,  and  Kent  were  "intimate  fellow-students  of 

'  Quoted  from  Sir  Arthur  Quillcr-Couch  who  got  it 
ironi  a  professor  of  his  whose  name  he  didn't  mention. 


Livingston's"  and  that  the  four  "met  outside  the 
office  and  tirelessly  argued  legal  topics  and 
methods  of  study." 

("Who  told  Lucy?") 

You  look  for  a  footnote.  There  isn't  any.  You 
look  for  a  bibliography.  There  isn't  any.  (It's 
an  old  book.) 

("I  don't  know.") 

You  go  back  to  the  D.A.B.  bibliography  on 
Livingston.  It  includes,  among  others,  a  book  on 
the  Livingston  family  and  four  magazine  articles 
on  Edward.    You  consult  all  five. 

The  book  on  the  Livingston  family  repeats 
the  story.  A  footnote  gives  Hunt,  Life  of  Edivard 
Livingston,  as  its  source.  Three  of  the  four  arti- 
cles repeat  the  story.  In  footnotes,  two  cite  Hunt 
as  their  source,  one  cites  Hatcher. 

("It  must  be  true,  it's  all  over  town!") 

You  hit  upon  a  simple  way  to  check  the  story. 
You  go  back  to  the  D.A.B.  and  look  up,  in  order, 
Alexander  Hamilton,  Aaron  Burr,  and  James 
Kent. 

When  the  library  closes,  you  go  home,  mix 
yourself  a  stiff  martini,  and  crouch  over  it  for  a 
while,  oppressed  by  a  feeling  that  you're  not 
doing  very  well. 

What  bothers  you  is  not  that  while  Edward 
Livingston  was  studying  law  in  the  office  of  John 
Lansing  in  Albany,'  James  Kent  was  studying  law 
in  the  office  of  Egbert  Benson  in  Poughkeepsie,^ 
and  Aaron  Burr  had  finished  studying  with  Wil- 
liam Paterson  in  Raritan,  New  Jersey,  and  moved 
on  to  the  office  of  an  unnamed  lawyer  in  Haver- 
straw,  New  York.^  Or  even  that  Alexander  Ham- 
ilton either  "studied  law  in  the  office  of  Colonel 
Robert  Troup  in  Albany,"^  or  "rented  a  house  in 
Albany  and  took  Robert  Troup  to  live  with 
him,"'  or  "received  all  his  legal  training  in  New 
York  City."* 

What  bothers  you  is:  are  you  sure?  If  so,  of 
what?  All  you  are  sure  of  is  that  each  professor 
(most  of  the  Recognized  Sources  were  college  pro- 
fessors) copied  out  what  he  read  in  the  books  of 
his  predecessors— getting  it  from  Mabel  who  got 
it  from  Lucy  who  got  it  from  Pearl  who  got  it 
God-knows-where— and  then  listed  all  of  them 
solemnly  as  a  bibliography. 

A  little  gin  does  wonders,  however,  and  pres- 
ently you  begin  to  feel  more  cheerful.  For  one 
thing,  you've  at  least  found  out  who  Edward 
Livingston  was.  And  for  another,  you  may  not 
even  need  him  in  the  cast. 

'  Opus  cit. 

^  D.A.B. 

^  Portrait  of  a  Prodigy  by  Loth. 

*  History  of  the  New  York  Bench  and  Bar, 


59 

A  month  later  you  have  finished  the  out- 
line on  the  Alien  and  Sedition  Acts— and  you 
didn't  need  Livingston  in  the  cast.  You 
didn't  need  historians  either:  you  used  the  Con- 
gressional Record,  transcripts  of  the  Sedition 
trials,  and  other  original  sources  such  as  diaries 
and  newspapers  of  the  day.  No  footnotes.  No 
bibliography.  A  man's  life,  however,  is  a  different 
matter.  And  having  finished  the  TV  project,  you 
once  more  wander  into  the  Public  Library  in 
search  of  Edward  Livingston. 

Thirteen  biographies,  twenty-nine  histories  of 
the  period,  nine  magazine  articles,  seven  memoirs, 
four  essays,  four  lectures,  three  journals,  three 
annals,  two  diaries,  two  memorials,  one  master's 
thesis,  one  monograph,  five  libraries,  and  six 
months  later,  you  still  haven't  found  him.  But 
you've  acquired  a  collection  of  facts  straight  out 
of  Gilbert  and  Sullivan. 

Three  things  happen  to  gossip  in  the  retelling: 
(1)  somebody  gets  it  wrong;  (2)  somebody  garbles 
it;  and  (3)  somebody  embroiders  it.  Herewith  a 
sample  from  each  category: 

(1.  Somebody  got  it  wrong.)  Either  Edward 
Brockholst  and  John  R.  Livingston  founded  the 
city  of  Esperanza  on  the  Hudson  in  1807.'  Or 
La  Rochefoucauld-Liancourt  visited  Esperanza 
on  the  Hudson  in  1795.^ 

(2.  Somebody  garbled  it.)  Either  "Gulian  C. 
Verplanck  .  .  .  despite  his  Federalist  and  aristo- 
cratic background  .  .  .  began  uttering  heresy  as 
early  as  1790.  Perhaps  it  was  the  influence  of 
Edward  Livingston  with  whom  he  studied  for 
two  years. "^  Or  Gulian  C.  Verplanck  was  born 
in  1784  and  entered  the  office  of  Edward  Living- 
ston in  1801.*  Or  Gulian  C.  Verplanck  was  born 
in  1786  and  studied  law  with  Edward  Livingston.^ 
Or  Gulian  C.  Verplanck  was  born  in  1786  and 
studied  law  with  Josiah  Ogden  Hoffman." 

Any  way  you  take  it— and  despite  his  Federalist 
and  aristocratic  background— Gulian  C.  Ver- 
planck was  uttering  heresy  at  the  age  of  six  or 
the  age  of  four. 

(3.  Somebody  embroidered  it— or  Gossip  Run 
Rampant.) 

When  Livingston  was  a  child,  the  British  in- 
vaded   Livingston    Manor    and    set    fire    to    the 

'  Tlie  Hudson,  by  Carl  Carmer. 

-  Travels  in  America,  vol.  II,  by  La  Rochefoucauld- 
Liancourt. 

^Decline  of  Aristocracy  in  N.  Y.  Politics,  hy  Dixon 
Ryan  Fox.  (The  italics  are  mine;  also.  I  imagine.  Gu- 
lian C.  Verplanck's.) 

*  "Address  to  the  Century  Club,"  bv  Daly,  April  9, 
1870. 

^  Courts  and  Lawyers  of  New   York. 

"D.A.  B. 


60 


"FOOTNOTE- AND- MOUTH     DISEASE" 


manor  house  in  which  he  was  born.  Before  the 
invaders  arrived,  Edward's  mother,  Margaret 
Beekman  Livingston  (the  "high-bred  dame"  here- 
inafter referred  to)  piled  her  children  and  posses- 
sions into  wagons  and  fled  to  Connecticut. 

According  to  Lucy  (Hunt,  Life  of  Edioord 
Livingston):  "Let  the  reader  picture  to  himself— 
what  actually  occurred— that  high-bred  dame,  at 
the  very  moment  of  starting  upon  this  journey, 
enjoying  a  hearty  laugh  at  the  figure  made  by  a 
favorite  servant,  a  fat  old  Negro  woman,  perched 
in  solemn  anxiety  at  the  top  of  one  of  the  wagon 
loads." 

Sixty  or  seventy  years  later  and  according  to 
Mabel  (Carl  Carmer,  The  Hudson):  "At  Cler- 
mont ...  a  train  of  wagons  filled  with  silver  .  .  . 
furniture  .  .  .  bedding  .  .  .  was  on  its  way  to  Con- 
necticut. In  one  of  them  sat  stalwart  Margaret 
Beekman  Livingston  .  .  .  laughing  heartily  at 
her  fat  black  cook  who  sat  on  a  pile  of  kitchen 
utensils  and  directed  her  little  grandson's  driving 
efforts  with  energetic  thrusts  of  a  long-handled 
toasting  fork." 

Enter  Mrs.  Julia  Delafield  with  another  ver- 
sion. But  Mrs.  Delafield's  maiden  name  was 
Li\ingston,  and  her  grandmother  (the  Gertrude 
in  her  story)  was  Edward  Livingston's  sister.  Says 
Mrs.  Delafield  (Life  of  Morgan  Lewis):  "The 
mother  and  her  daughters  crowded  into  the  fam- 
ily coach.  Gertrude  looked  out  of  the  back  win- 
dow and  was  so  diverted  by  the  ludicrous  figure 
of  an  overgrown  Negress  perched  on  top  of  a 
feather  bed  and  rolling  helplessly  from  side  to 
side  that  for  a  moment  she  forgot  her  grief  and 
laughed  aloud.  Her  mother  turned  to  her  and 
said,  'Oh,  Gertrude,  can  you  laugh  now?'  " 

Mrs.  Delafield  then  adds:  "I  related  this  anec- 
dote which  I  have  heard  repeatedly  from  the 
culprit  herself,  to  Mr.  Hunt,  the  biographer  of 
Edward  Livingston.   He  misunderstood  me." 

("Yon  knoxv  Lucy,  she  never  gets  anything 
straight!") 

SPURRED  on  by  such  nuggets  as  this  one, 
and  having  run  out  of  New  York  City 
libraries  to  "research"  in,  you  are  now  ready  for 
field  trips. 

Thanks  to  assorted  bibliographies,  you  have 
been  told  that  two  libraries— one  nearby,  one 
several  hours  away  by  train— have  "large  collec- 
tions of  Livingston  manuscripts."  However,  there 
were  numerous  branches  of  Livingstons,  all  in- 
sanely fertile.  (There  were,  for  instance,  four 
Robert  Livingstons  alive  at  the  same  time,  and 
three  of  them  were  Robert  R.  Tliere  were  three 
Henrys,  two  of  them  Henry  B.;  three  Williams, 


three  Johns,  two  Peter  R.s,  four  Elizas,  two 
Kittys,  and  a  Gitty— that  you  know  of.)  You 
therefore  write  to  both  libraries  to  inquire 
whether  their  collections  include  data  about  your 
Livingston:  Edward,  1764-1836. 

A  charming  letter  from  the  distant  library  says 
that  they  have  "five  items"  concerning  Edward 
Livingston.  Hot  on  the  trail  at  last,  you  hurry 
off  to  Grand  Central  Station  and  board  a  train, 
which  will  take  you  to  within  nine  miles  of  the 
library,   from  which  point  you  ca)i   take  a  cab. 

Arrived  at  the  library,  you  are  warmly  wel- 
comed by  the  curator  and  taken  to  the  Special 
Collections  Room.  Your  roll  of  microfilm  is  in- 
serted in  the  machine,  and  you  are  left  alone,  pen 
poised,  to  await  the  five  items. 

Item  One:  Rent  receipt  issued  by  E.  Livingston 
to  a  tenant. 

I  tern  Tiuo:  Rent  receipt  issued  by  E.  Livingston 
to  a  tenant. 

Item  Three:  Rent  receipt  issued  by  E.  Liv- 
ingston to  a  tenant. 

Item  Four:  Bill  to  E.  Livingston  from  a  coach 
maker. 

Item  Five:  A  note,  on  a  small  sheet  of  white 
paper,  herewith  reprinted  in  its  entirety: 

Sir 

I  will  be  diere  at  eleven  o'clock  if 
I   am  not  unexpectedly  delayed  at   the  office. 

No  date,  you  may  have  noticed.  No  residence. 
No  envelope,  therefore  no  postmark.  No  ad- 
dressee also.  Obviously  delivered  by  hand  to  a 
fellow  down  the  street. 

Back  at  home  that  night,  there's  a  letter  from 
the  nearby  library  informing  you  that  a  professor 
is  writing  a  life  of  Edward's  brother  and  has 
therefore  been  given  "exclusive  use  of  the  Liv- 
ingston manuscripts  for  one  year."  Why  not  get 
in  touch  with  us  a  year  from  now? 

(You  have  a  sudden  vision  of  Arthur  Miller 
arriving  at  Salem,  Massachusetts,  to  do  research 
for  "The  Crucible"  and  being  told  that  Salem, 
Massachusetts,  is  closed  for  a  year,  some  pro- 
fessor's using  it.) 

The  time  has  come  to  sit  down,  take  off  your 
shoes,  cup  yoiu"  hands  round  a  mug  of  last  night's 
warmed-over  coffee,  and  ask  yourself: 

"Quo  vadis?" 

In  blithe  disregard  of  the  fact  that  you  have 
two  months'  rent  in  the  bank,  no  job,  no  pros- 
pects, nothing  in  the  typewriter,  and  nothing  in 
your  agent's  offuc,  you  have  spent  montlis  chas- 
ing hither  and  yon  looking  for  Edward  Living- 
ston on  the  (hante  that  when  you're  rich  you 
might  take  five  years  off  and  write  his  biography. 


BY     HELENE     HANFF 


61 


You  know  now  that  a  biography  of  Edward 
Livingston  is  not  the  job  for  yon.  In  Purgatory, 
you  would  ask  for  another  assignment. 

At  last  you  put  away  the  bibliographies,  the 
notebooks,  the  correspondence,  the  library  slips 
and  searcher's  passes  and  Supplemental  Lists  of 
Recognized  Sources.  You  get  all  of  it  out  of  sight 
and  the  phone  rings.  It's  your  agent. 

"How  would  you  like,"  she  says,  "to  do  a  very 
short  American  history  book  for  children?  Ten 
thousand  words." 

No  job.  No  prospects.  Two  months'  rent  in 
bank.    You  tell  her  you'd  love  it. 

"A-thousand-dollars-no-royalties,"  she  says,  very 
fast,  and  hangs  up. 

A  ten-thousand-word  history  pamphlet,  you 
feel,  should  take  two  months  of  research  and  a 
month  to  write.   If  you  took  this  up  for  a  living 


you  could  make  a  cool  $4,000  per  annum,  less 
taxes  and  agent's  commission. 

On  your  way  to  the  editor's  office,  you  wonder 
what  contributors  to  the  D.A.B.  were  paid;  and 
how  much  time  they  could  afford  to  spend  on 
their  research.  You  wonder  what  publishers  pay 
the  college  professors  who  write  history  books. 
You  wonder  how— since  nobody  ever  buys  these 
books  but  libraries— they  can  afford  to  pay  them 
anything. 

The  editor  wants  to  know  if  you  can  write  the 
book  in  ten  days.  (I  am  not  making  this  up.) 
You  settle  on  three  weeks.  You  complain  of  this, 
however,  to  an  editor  friend.  Research,  you  point 
out  to  him,  takes  time. 

"Oh!"  he  assures  you  heartily,  "you  can  do 
all  that  research  at  second  hand.  Just  be  sure 
you  use  Recognized  Sources." 


GOD    OPENS    HIS    MAIL 

LARRY  RUBIN 


Dear  Sir: 

Your  poem  interested  us 
Somewhat,  but  we  do  not  consider  it 
Entirely  successful.    For  one  thing. 
Your  floral  diction  blooms  in  the  right  places. 
But  there  are  bugs  which  seem  almost  deliberately 
Placed.  Then,  again,  life  breathes  everywhere 
In  your  work,  yet  you  cancel  it 
Later  in  the  lines  with  a  disdain 
No  artist  with  a  trace  of  self-respect 
Would  dare  to  show  (not  to  mention  compassion 
For  the  child  of  his  brain,  but  let 
That  pass).    Do  you  have  a  friend 
Who  might  perhaps  be  willing  to  read  your  work 
Before  you  send  it  out?  Just  a  suggestion, 
But  beginners  must  be  guided.   Another  thing: 
Your  images,  though  pleasant  taken  singly. 
Fail  to  fuse  properly.   We  find  a  sly 
Intent  to  suggest  an  over-all  design, 
And  yet  the  reader  sees  no  real  organic 
Whole.  Your  metaphors  stand  isolated; 
No  poem  can  carry  such  disparities 
As  shooting  stars  and  glory-holes,  no  matter 
How  securely  yoked.  Creation  carries 
Certain  responsibilities,  and  we 
Are  unconvinced  you  have  accepted  these. 
There  are  other  problems,  of  course. 
But  our  staff  is  limited,  and  time  is  short. 
You  have,  we  feel,  much  to  learn,  but  your  talent 
Will  help. 

Cordially, 

The  Editors. 

P.S.    Since  half  the  battle  is  knowing 

Your  market,  perhaps  you  would  care  to  subscribe. 

Harper's  Magazine,  July  1961 


WALTER    PRESCOTT    WEBB 


THE  SEARCH  FOR 


WILLIAM  E.  HINDS 


L  O  rv  more  tJian  fifty  years  now — since 
May  1904 — /  have  been  searching  for  a 
man  I  never  saw.  Though  he  died  forty-five 
years  ago,  the  search  grows  more  intensive 
as  I  approach  inevitably  the  time  when  I 
can  no  longer  pursue  it.  The  reason  I  con- 
tinue this  search  is  that  I  owe  this  man  a 
great  debt.  It  zvould  mean  a  lot  to  me  if  I 
could  report  to  him  how  a  long-shot  invest- 
ment he  ?nade  in  Texas  finally  turned  out. 
Since  I  cannot  report  to  William  E. 
Hinds,  I  am  doing  the  next  best  thing  by 

reporting  to  other  people— in  hopes  that  at  least 
some  of  them  may  be  enriched  by  the  spirit  that 
animated  this  man.  I  think  this  would  please 
him.  Once  when  I  tried  to  express  my  apprecia- 
tion, he  wrote:  "You  cannot  do  anything  for  me, 
but  if  I  help  you  now,  perhaps  in  time  you  can 
help  someone  else."  This  is  the  nearest  thing  to 
applied  Christianity   that   I  know. 

He  never  told  me  much  about  himself  and  I 
did  not  inquire  because  a  boy  on  a  small  farm 
in  West  Texas  does  not  ask  j^ersonal  questions  of 
a  mysterious  and  wonderful  benefactor  in  New 
York.  He  died  before  I  had  anything  to  say  to 
him,  before  there  was  any  return  on  his  invest- 
ment, of  Avhich  I  was  the  sole  custodian.  I  knew 
what  I  owed  him,  but  for  a  long  time  I  feared 
that  I  might  default  on  the  obligation.  As  the 
years  went  by,  I  prospered  in  a  moderate  way 
and  gradually  rose  in  my  profession  of  historian 


and  writer.  The  greater  my  success,  the  greater 
became  my  sense  of  obligation  to  him.  I  have  to 
find  some  way  to  partially  discharge  it. 

So  this  is  a  sort  of  public  acknowledgment  of 
the  obligation.  It  is  also  an  appeal  for  more 
information  about  William  E.  Hinds.  Surely 
there  are  some  still  living  in  New  York  who  knew 
him,  and  there  may  bt  others  elsewhere  who  were 
warmed  by  his  spirit.  Before  I  set  down  the 
scant  facts  I  have  about  him,  I  must  first  tell 
how  his  life  touched  my  own. 

My  parents  migrated  from  Mississippi  to  Texas 
about  1884,  destitute  products  of  the  Civil  War 
in  search  of  a  new  opportunity.  I  was  born  in 
1888,  and  four  years  later  they  moved  to  West 
Texas.  There  I  received  the  childhood  impres- 
sions that  account  for  the  realism  in  my  first 
book.  The  Great  Plains.  My  father  was  a  country 
schoolteacher,  self-educated,  and  he  never  had 
more  than  a  second-grade  certificate.  He  was 
one  of  the  last  fighting  teachers,  employed  to 
"hold  school"  in  the  country  schools  where  the 
big  boys  had  run  the  teacher  off  the  year  before. 
It  was  a  rough  life  in  a  rough  country.  My 
father  was  usually  paid  a  premium  of  $10  a 
month  to  teach  these  outlaw  schools.  He  got  $50 
or  $60  a  month  for  a  five-month  term— an  annual 
income  of  $250  or  $300,  supplemented  by  what 
he  earned  in  the  summer  farming  or  working  at 
anything  that  came  up,  at  about  seventy-five 
cents  or  a  dollar  a  day. 

I  learned  to  read  early,  and  by  the  time  I  was 
ten  reading  became  a  passion.  Since  my  father 
was  a  teacher,  we  had  books  in  the  house,  and 
both  my  parents  were  readers.  At  that  time  the 
most  popular  brand  of  coffee  was  put  out  by 
Arbucklc  Brothers,  and  you  could  get  ten  pounds 
of  it  for  a  dollar.  The  beans  came  in  one-pound 
paper   bags,   with    Mr.   Arbuckle's   signature   on 


63 


the  side;  ii  yon  collected  enough  of  his  signa- 
tures, he  would  send  you  a  premium.  The  first 
book  I  ever  acquired  for  myself,  ]ack  the  Giant 
Killer,  cost  me  ten  signatures.  It  was  the  first 
jjiece  of  mail  that  Uncle  Sam  ever  brought  to  me, 
and  I  can  never  forget  the  thrill  of  receiving  it 
at  the  Lacasa  post  office,  the  thrill  of  reading  it 
on  Old  Charlie  as  I  rode  him  home.  It  was  the 
beginning  of  a  long  series  of  thrills  and  shocks 
that  have  come  to  me  via  the  post  office. 

Not  only  did  I  read  everything  in  our  house, 
but  I  scoured  the  country  for  three  miles  to  come 
up  with  files  of  The  Youth's  Companion ,  The 
Saturday  Blade,  and  TJie  Chicago  Ledger.  From 
a  peddler  I  acquired  a  big  file  of  Tij)  Top 
Weekly,  which  dealt  ^vith  the  doings  of  Frank 
Merriwell,  who  seemed  to  be  running  things  at 
Yale.  As  far  as  I  can  recall,  this  was  the  first 
lime  I  ever  heard  of  college.  From  Frank  Merri- 
well I  got  the  first  faint  desire  to  go  to  college 
myself  but  it  never  occurred  to  me  that  I  would 
ever  do  it. 

This  reading  opened  up  such  a  wonderful 
world  that  I  developed  an  aversion  to  the  one 
that  lay  around  me.  I  wanted  to  get  away  from  it 
into  the  world  where  the  books  were. 

When  I  was  either  twelve  or  thirteen,  my 
father  homesteaded  a  quarter  section  of  land— 
160  acres— in  Stephens  County.  This  was  about 
ihe  last  of  the  vacant  land,  since  the  open  range 


Dr.  Walter  Prescott  Webb  has  been  described 
by  "Time''  as  "his  generation  s  foremost  philos- 
opher of  the  frontier,  and  the  leading  historian  of 
the  American  West."  Most  of  his  honors  came  late 
in  life.  When  he  was  seventy  years  old,  in  1958, 
he  was  elected  president  of  the  American  Historical 
Association,  received  a  $10,000  award  from  the 
Council  of  Learned  Societies,  was  made  an  honorary 
Doctor  of  Laws  by  the  University  of  Chicago,  and 
ivas  named  by  ex-students  of  the  University  of  Texas 
as  one  of  its  four  most  distinguished  living  alumni. 
His  best-known  books  are  "The  Great  Plains, ' 
"The  Texas  Rangers,"  "Divided  We  Stand,"  and 
"The  Great  Frontier."  Dr.  Webb  has  written  many 
articles  for  "Harper  s"  and  for  historical  journals. 
He  was  Distinguished  Professor  of  History  at  the 
University  of  Texas,  Harmsworth  Professor  at  Ox- 
ford, and  Harkness  Lecturer  at  London  University. 
Since  his  "retirement"  in  1958,  he  has  taught  at 
Rice  and  the  University  of  Houston,  and  now  is 
working  for  the  Ford  Foundation  on  an  experi- 
mental project  for  the  teaching  of  history  by  closed- 
circuit  television.  He  is  the  owner  of  Friday 
Mountain  Ranch,  which  he  describes  as  "overrun 
ivith  foxes,  bobcats,  'coons,  and  ring-tails." 


wds  fast  going  under  fence.  The  best  land  had 
already  been  taken,  and  this  place  lay  back  in 
what  was  called  the  Cross  Timbers— deep  sand 
with  a  red  clay  bottom,  covered  with  scrub  oak 
and  blackjack.  My  father  built  a  plank  house  in 
an  open  glade,  and  we  began  opening  up  a  farm, 
the  hardest  work  a  boy  can  do. 

This  land  had  once  belonged  to  Phil  S.  Leh- 
man of  New  York,  but  he  had  wisely  gone, off 
and  forgotten  all  about  it.  When  we  had  paid 
the  back  taxes  and  lived  on  it  ten  years,  that 
made  it  ours  according  to  Texas  law.  We  didn't 
exactly  steal  it,  but  we  were  mighty  glad  when 
the  ten  years  expired.  During  that  time  my 
mother  was  always  apprehensive  when  a  stranger 
poked  his  head  out  of  the  brush,  and  it  was  not 
until  after  the  limitation  had  run  that  we 
widened  the  road.  From  the  time  I  was  thirteen 
until  I  was  seventeen  seems  an  eternity.  When 
we  plowed,  we  plowed  in  new,  stumpy  land,  and 
when  we  were  not  plowing,  we  were  making 
more  stumps  and  more  new  ground.  For  at  least 
two  years  I  did  not  go  to  school  at  all  because  my 
father  was  away  teaching  in  the  winter,  and  I 
was  the  "man  on  the  place"  except  on  weekends. 

VERY  early  in  my  career,  my  father  made 
a  casual  remark  that  had  enormous  influ- 
ence on  my  life.  He  said  that  when  I  grew  up 
he  wanted  me  to  be  an  editor.  Now  I  didn't 
know  what  an  editor  was,  but  his  remark  ex- 
cited my  curiosity.  I  finally  learned  that  an 
editor  ran  the  local  paper.  One  day  when  we 
were  in  Ranger,  I  made  bold  to  go  into  the 
office  of  the  Ranger  Record,  and  there  was  the 
editor,  whose  name  was  Williams,  pecking  away 
on  an  Oliver  typewriter.  This  was  the  first  type- 
writer I  had  ever  seen,  and  it  fascinated  me.  I 
stood  looking  over  Editor  Williams'  shoulder  at 
this  marvel  until  he  suggested  that  I  do  some- 
thing else.  By  this  time  I  had  spied  a  treasure  of 
untold  magnitude,  a  great  pile  of  "exchanges" 
which  Editor  Williams  had  thrown  into  a  corner 
of  the  office  because  no  wastepaper  basket  was 
big  enough  to  contain  them.  Most  of  the  pajjers 
were  in  the  original  wrappers,  and  all  but  the 
latest  ones  were  covered  with  dust.  I  got  up  my 
courage  to  ask  if  I  might  have  some  of  them,  and 
the  editor  said  go  ahead.  I  carried  off  as  many 
as  I  thought  it  would  be  seemly  to  try  to  get 
away  with. 

Among  them  were  several  copies  of  The  Sunny 
South,  edited  by  Joel  Chandler  Harris  and  pub- 
lished in  Atlanta,  Georgia.  The  official  records 
lell  me  that  The  Sunny  South,  a  weekly,  was  "de- 
voted to  literature,  romance,  fact,  and  fiction." 


64 


THE     SEARCH     FOR     WILLIAM     E.     HINDS 


It  was  then  publishing  A.  Conan  Doyle,  Uncle 
Remus,  Gelett  Burgess,  Will  Irwin,  and  many 
other  good  writers,  with  lavish  illustrations.  It 
was  wonderiul,  but  the  tragedy  was  that  I  had 
only  a  few  copies. 

In  reading  it,  however,  I  learned  that  for  ten 
cents  I  could  have  The  Simriy  Smith  every  week 
for  three  months.  I  did  not  have  ten  cents,  and 
I  knew  of  no  way  of  getting  such  an  amount  of 
money.  My  father  was  working  hard  and  I  was 
almost  afraid  to  approach  him,  though  I  know 
now  that  he  probably  would  have  given  mc  the 
dime  had  I  asked  at  a  propitious  time.  That 
winter  he  was  away,  and  my  mother  and  I  often 
sat  up  late  reading.  One  night  I  told  her  what  I 
wanted,  and  why.  She  did  not  say  anything,  but 
I  can  see  her  now  as  she  got  up  from  her  chair 
and  went  diagonally  across  the  room  in  the  yel- 
low light  of  a  kerosene  lamp,  and  extracted  from 
some  secret  place  a  thin  dime.  It  may  have  been 
the  only  coin  in  the  house. 

That  dime  is  the  most  important  piece  of 
money  I  have  ever  owned,  for  my  entire  life 
pivots  on  its  shiny  surface.  It  brought  The  Sunny 
South  for  three  months,  and  soon  the  whole  fam- 
ily was  in  love  with  it.  There  was  never  any 
troid)lc  about  renewing  the  subscription. 

The  letler  column  in  The  Sunny  South  was 
presided  over  by  Mrs.  Mary  E.  Bryan.  One  day  I 
sat  down  and  wrote  her  a  letter  which  had  one 
(]ualiiy  dear  to  an  editor— brevity— and  perhaps 
another  essential  to  the  writer,  a  willingness  to 
l;i\  bare  something  deep  in  the  human  heart. 
I  said  I  wanted  to  be  a  writer,  to  get  an  educa- 
tion. 1  mentioned  that  my  father  was  a  teacher, 
and  thai  lie  had  been  crijjpled  in  an  accident.  I 
signed  with  my  middle  name,  which  I  always 
liked  because  an  uncle  who  had  the  name  was 
something  of  a  writer. 

The  letter  was  published  in  the  issue  of  May 
14,  1904.  My  father  had  come  home  from  school, 
and  we  were  then  plowing  corn  with  Georgia 
stocks.  (A  Georgia  stock  is  a  kind  of  one-horse 
plow.)  The  corn  was  less  than  a  foot  high.  It 
was  late  in  the  afternoon,  the  time  when  the  sun 
hangs  unmoving  in  the  sky  for  an  incredible 
length  of  time.  We  were  very  tired  and  were 
sitting  on  the  beams  of  our  Georgia  stocks  letting 
the  horses  blow,  when  my  sister  came  from  the 
mail  box  of  the  new  rural  route  which  ran  about 
a  mile  from  the  house  and  handed  me  a  letter. 

Few  such  letters  have  ever  been  received  by 
tired  boys  sitting  on  Georgia  stocks  in  a  stumpy 
field.  The  envelope  was  white  as  snow  and  of 
the  finest  paper;  the  ink  was  black  as  midnight; 
the  handwriting  bold  and  full  of  character,  with 


fine   dashes.    The   flap   was   closed   by   dark-red 
sealing  wax  stamped  with  the  letter  H. 
The  address  was: 


Prescott 


Ranger 


Texas 


c/o  Lame  Teacher 


The  letter  bore  a  New  York  postmark.  May  17, 
1904,  hut  there  was  no  return  address.  The  en- 
velope which  lies  before  me  noAv  shows  what  care 
I  used  in  opening  this  letter.    It  read: 


"Prescott" 

Ranger 

Texas 

Dear  Junior— I  am  a  reader  of  the  "Sunny  South"  and 
noticed  your  letter  in  the  "Gossip  Corner"— I  trust 
you  will  not  get  discouraged  in  your  aspirations  for 
higher  things,  as  you  know  there  is  no  such  word  as 
fail,  in  the  lexicon  of  youth:  so  keep  your  mind  fixed 
on  a  lofty  purpose  and  your  hopes  will  be  realized,  I 
am  sure,  though  it  will  take  time  and  work.— I  will 
be  glad  to  send  you  some  books  or  magazines,  (if 
you  will  allow  me  to)  if  you  will  let  mc  know  what 
you  like— Yrs  truly 

Wm.   E.   Hinds 

489  Classon  Ave 

^  ,^,  Brooklyn— New  York 

May   16/04  ^ 

Now  I  realize  how  narrowly  I  missed  this 
rendezvous  with  destiny.  How  did  it  come  about 
that  a  letter  addressed  to  "Prescott"  reached  me? 
The  Sunny  South  came  addressed  to  W.  Prescott 
Webb,  and  it  passed  through  the  hands  of  Mr. 
John  M.  Griffin,  the  bewhiskered  postmaster  who 
was  an  ex-Confederate  soldier.  Since  The  Sunny 
South  was  pro-Confederate,  Mr.  Griffin  got  to 
reading  my  paper  and  fell  in  love  with  it.  He 
and  the  rural  mail  carrier  were  probably  the 
only  people  outside  my  family  who  knew  that 
the  name  Prescott  was  really  mine. 

Even  so,  that  letter  nearly  missed  its  mark. 
The  envelope  bears  the  post-office  stamp, 
"MissF.NT,"  but  I  have  no  idea  where  it  went 
before   reaching   me. 

From  that  day  on  I  never  lacked  for  something 
to  read— the  best  magazines  in  the  land  and  oc- 
casional books.  Every  Christmas  a  letter  would 
arrive  from  New  York,  and  usually  a  tie  of  a 
quality  not  common  in  West  Texas. 

These  books  and  magazines  fired  to  white  heat 
my  desire  for  an  education.  Evidently  my  father, 
who  was  not  a  demonstrative  man,  was  touched 
by  my  fervor.  The  stumpy  farm  had  expanded 
and  because  of  my  father's  love  for  the  soil  and 
his  understanding  of  the  principles  of  dry  farm- 
ing, it  became  productive.  But  there  was  still  not 
enough  of  it,  and  we  rented  additional  land  from 


' 


BY     WALTER     PRESCOTT     WEBB 


k.. 


cy   ^ 


/t^ 


(gt^vcX^ 


/ji^€X^^<iJiJ^br 


A<!t*<^^,e^ 


65 


the  neighbors.  One  day  when  we  were  clearing 
land  my  lather  asked  me  a  question. 

"Do  you  think,"  he  asked,  "that  il  you  had  one 
year  in  the  Ranger  school  you  could  pass  the 
examination    lor   a    teacher's   certificate?" 

To  that  question  the  only  answer  was  yes. 

"Well,"  he  said,  "it  you  will  work  hard,  and 
il  we  make  a  good  crop,  we  will  move  to  Ranger 
lor  one  year  and  you  can  go  to  school." 

The  year  1905  was  one  of  the  good  years  when 
the  rains  came.  The  fields  produced  bountilully, 
especially  the  new  ground  with  the  accumulated 
humus  of  a  thousand  years.  The  Ranger  cotton 
gins  ran  day  and  night  all  fall.  I  know  because 
I  fed  the  suction  pipe  on  Saturdays  and  after 
school.  I  had  to  make  a  sacrifice  to  go  to  school. 
Every  boy  in  West  Texas  had  a  horse.  Mine  was 
a  trim  blue  mare,  close-built,  easy  to  keep,  fast, 
and  lovely  to  look  at.  I  sold  her  for  $60  to  get 
money  for  books;  I  got  the  tuition  free  by  sweep- 
ing the  school  floors. 

I  pored  over  my  books  because  I  had  a  con- 
tract to  deliver  a  second-grade  certificate  in  the 
spring.  My  extensive  reading  gave  me  some  ad- 
vantage, but  I  had  rough  going  with  mathe- 
matics and  grammar.  I  shall  never  forget  J.  E. 
Temple  Peters,  principal  of  the  school  and  a 
near  genius,  who  spent  hours  coaching  a  group 
of  us  to  pass  the  examination  at  the  county  seat. 
When  the  time  came,  I  had  developed  a  severe 
( ase  of  tonsillitis,  and  my  fever  must  have  gone  to 
103  and  over.  Peters,  who  was  one  of  the  ex- 
aminers, fed  me  aspirin  while  the  fever  fired  my 
brain  and  seemed  to  sharpen  all  my  facidties.  I 
wrote  on  the  eight  required  subjects  for  two 
days  far  into  the  night,  but  when  I  rose  to  turn 


in  my  papers  I  staggered  in  the  aisle.  There  was 
never  any  thought  of  quitting.  This  was  my  only 
chance. 

When  school  ended,  I  went  back  to  the  farm 
to  await  the  decision  of  the  examiners.  Then  one 
day  there  was  an  official  envelope  in  the  mail 
box.  It  was  just  a  second-grade  certificate  which 
permitted  me  to  teach  in  the  rural  schools,  but 
to  me  it  was  a  certificate  of  emancipation.  I  have 
acquired  a  good  many  parchments  of  finer  qual- 
ity in  my  career,  but  this  one  outranks  them  all. 

MY  father  not  only  moved  the  family  back 
to  the  farm,  but  he  quit  teaching  to  de- 
vote all  his  time  to  it.  I  began  where  he  left  off, 
and  through  his  influence  had  no  trouble  in 
getting  an  appointment.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  I 
taught  three  schools  in  that  year,  one  for  six 
weeks,  one  for  four  months,  and  one  for  two. 
My  salary  ranged  from  $42.50  to  $45  a  month, 
and  I  saved  a  bigger  proportion  of  it  than  I  have 
ever  saved  since.  I  had  an  affair  of  conscience 
because  of  the  short  hours.  I  had  been  accus- 
tomed to  working  from  ten  to  fourteen  hours  a 
day,  and  there  seemed  to  be  something  immoral 
about  quitting  at  four  o'clock. 

With  the  money  I  saved  I  spent  another  year 
in  school,  and  in  the  sjiring  I  passed  the  exam- 
ination for  a  first-grade  certificate.  Suddenly  I 
became  a  success.  I  was  employed  at  .175  a  month 
to  teach  the  Merriman  school  which  my  father 
had  taught  two  years  at  .$60.  (Underneath  the 
stony  Merriman  school  groimds  and  the  nearby 
Baptist  church  yard  lay  a  million  or  so  barrels 
of  oil,  not  to  be  found  for  ten  years.)  I  was 
getting  the  maximum  salary  paid  in  the  county 


66 


THE     SEARCH     FOR     WILLIAM     E.     HINDS 


schools.  I  was  wearing  good  clothes  and  moving 
in  the  highest  circles  of  local  society,  working 
five  days  a  week  and  quitting  when  the  sun  was 
Irom  two  to  three  hours  high. 

Then  in  the  winter  of  1909  everything 
changed.  One  cold  day,  so  windy  that  the  peb- 
bles from  the  playing  field  rattled  like  buckshot 
against  the  side  of  the  school  building,  I  walked 
down  to  the  mail  box  and  found  a  bulky  letter 
from  William  E.  Hinds.  It  was  dated  January 
9,  1909.  Here  are  the  most  important  para- 
graphs: 

My  dear  Friend. 

.  .  .  We  have  not  had  much  winter  as  yet  but  the 
last  few  days  have  been  cold  and  presume  we  shall 
have  our  usual  amount  before  spring.  My  sister  went 
to  Washington,  D.  C,  for  the  holidays  and  was  at  the 
White  House  New  Year's.  Secretary  Cortelyou  is  our 
cousin,  so  she  was  invited  to  stay  at  the  White  House 
for  luncheon.  .  .  . 

My  friend.  I  wish  you  would  irrite  me  what  your 
plans  and  wishes  are  for  the  future.  Wc  all  have 
plans  and  hopes  for  the  future  and  it  is  well  we  have, 
even  if  they  are  not  always  realized.  Come,  let  us  be 
churns,  and  write  me  just  ivhat  is  on  your  mind: 
perhaps  I  can  help  you  and  after  all  the  best  thing  in 
life  is  to  help  some  one,  if  we  can.  One  would  count 
it  a  great  thing  (to  remember)  if  they  had  helped 
some  one,  that  had  afterwards  become  famous  or 
great,  say  for  instance  Lincoln  or  Gladstone  or  any  of 
the  other  great  ones  who  were  born  a  hundred  years 
ago  this  year.  And  perhaps  I  can  say,  "Why  I  helped 
J.  Prescott  Webb  when  he  was  a  young  man."*  And 
people  may  look  at  me,  as  a  privileged  character  to 
have  had  the  opportunity;  so  my  boy  tell  me  about 
your  plans  and  hopes  and  then  perhaps  I  may  l)e  able 
to  help  you  carry  them  out. 

Are  there  any  books  which  you  would  like?  //  so 
say  so  and  let  me  send  them  to  you.  If  you  don't  "say 
so"  I  may  send  them  anyway. 

Your  friend 
Wm.  E.  Hinds 

As  an  afterthought,  he  wrote  on  an  extra 
sheet  as  follows: 

I  am  interested  in  your  teaching.  How  many 
scholars  and  are  they  mostly  from  the  farm  or  town? 
Teaching  is  good  training  and  I  know  it  will  benefit 
you. 

Have  you  planned  going  to  College  in  the  fall,  if 
you  haven't  planned  it,  is  it  something  you  would 
like  to  do,  if  so  what  College  have  you  in  mind?  Now 
answer  all  these  questions,  please. 

At  the  time  the  letter  came  I  had  not  thought 
seriously  of  going  to  college.  That  was  some- 
thing for  the  sons  of  doctors  and  other  prosper- 
ous people.  Besides  I  was  already  a  success,  and 
rather  enjoying  the   illusion.    The   letter   faced 

*  For  years  he  did  not  get  my  first  initial  right,  but 
addressed  me  as  J.  Prescott  Wel)l). 


me   about,   and  made   what   1   was   doing   insig- 
nificant—a means  only. 

I  answered  all  his  questions,  telling  him  that 
I  would  like  to  go  to  the  University  of  Texas. 
I  had  saved  some  money,  for  I  had  been  at  work 
three  months,  and  I  determined  to  save  more. 
I  reduced  my  social  activity,  and  Avith  some  dif- 
ficulty restrained  myself  from  making  a  bid  for 
a  girl  I  had  a  very  hard  time  forgetting.  The 
road  ahead  was  rough  enough  for  one,  and  too 
rough  for  tAvo. 

THUS  it  came  about  that  in  September 
1909,  I  boarded  the  train  for  Austin  and  the 
University  of  Texas  with  approximately  $200. 
Our  agreement  was  that  I  Avould  spend  my 
money,  and  when  it  played  out,  I  would  notify 
Mr.  Hinds  and  he  would  send  me  a  check  each 
month.  At  the  end  of  the  second  year,  I  owed 
him  about  ,S500,  and  he  suggested  that  I  should 
drop  out  and  earn  some  money,  saying  that  "I 
am  not  a  rich  man."  I  sent  him  a  note  for  what 
I  owed,  but  he  woidd  accept  no  interest.  He 
never  did. 

In  1911-12,  I  taught  the  Bush  Knob  school  in 
Throckmorton  County,  S90  a  month.  I  reduced 
the  note  and  told  him  I  would  like  to  return  to 
the  imiversity.  He  approved,  and  I  can  simi  it 
all  up  by  saying  that  I  never  started  a  year  at 
the  imiversity  that  he  did  not  see  me  through. 
He  never  refused  any  requests  I  made  of  him, 
though  I  am  glad  to  remember  that  I  kept  them 
to  the  minimum. 

The  nearest  he  ever  came  to  a  refusal  was  one 
summer  when  I  made  a  good  deal  of  money  as  a 
student  salesman.  I  wrote  Mr.  Hinds  that  I 
wotdd  like  to  come  to  New  York  to  see  him,  and 
that  I  had  the  money.  He  advised  me  to  apply 
it  on  my  college  education.  I  did,  but  I  have 
always  regretted  that  I  never  saw  him. 

When  I  took  the  B.A.  degree  in  1915  I  owed 
him  something  less  than  .$500,  which  was  our 
limit.  And  here  I  need  to  say  something  about 
my  college  career.  I  was  twenty-one  years  old 
when  I  entered  college,  and  I  had  no  preparation 
for  it.  I  had  skipped  too  many  grades  and  too 
many  years  of  schooling.  I  did  not  have  en- 
trance credits,  but  because  I  was  twenty-one  the 
university  admitted  me  on  what  is  known  as  in- 
dividual approval.  My  career  as  an  undergrad- 
uate was  comjiletely  huking  in  distinction.  I 
made  fair  grades  in  most  subjects,  but  none  to 
make  Hinds  proud.  He  never  asked  a  question 
about  grades.  He  never  admonished  me  to  do 
better. 

But  every  month   the  check  came.    What  he 


BY     WALTER     PRESCOTT     WEBB 


67 


saw  in  me  I  have  never  been  able  to  understand- 
but  the  tact  that  he  saw  something,  that  he  seemed 
to  believe  in  me,  constituted  a  magnetic  force 
that  held  me  on  the  road.  If  I  felt  inclined  to 
quit,  or  to  go  on  a  binge  and  spend  money 
foolishly,  as  my  friends  often  did,  I  could  not  do 
it  for  very  long  because  there  was  a  mysterious 
man  in  New  York  who  trusted  me. 

Equipped  with  the  B.A.  degree,  I  got  a  job  as 
jjrincipal  of  the  Cuero  High  School  at  SI. S3  a 
month.  Then,  in  the  fall  of  1915  a  letter  came 
saying  that  William  E.  Hinds  was  dead. 

TH  E  lawyers  found  my  note  in  his  papers, 
and  they  began  to  write  me  crisp  and 
business-like  letters.  They  had  me  make  a  new 
note  to  his  sister,  Ida  K.  Hinds,  for  S265.  It  was 
co-signed  by  my  father  and  bore  interest.  Then 
came  a  letter  from  Miss  Hinds,  who  had  spent 
her  life  as  a  teacher  in  the  New  York  schools. 
She  said  that  she  had  taken  over  the  note,  and 
that  1  would  not  be  bothered  with  the  lawyers 
any  more.  In  the  fall  of  1916,  I  married  Jane 
Oliphant,  and  moved  to  the  San  Antonio  Main 
Avenue  High  School  as  a  teacher  of  history.  Miss 
Ida  Hinds  came  down  to  spend  a  part  of  the  win- 
ter at  the  Gunter  Hotel  and  she  was  often  our 
guest. 

She  told  me  about  all  I  know  of  her  brother; 
that  he  had  never  married,  that  he  had  helped 


other  boys,  and  that  he  was  an  importer  of 
European  novelties.  She  implied  that  he  was  not 
intensively  devoted  to  business,  was  rather  casual 
about  it.  After  his  death  I  received  an  excellent 
photograph  of  Hinds,  which  is  now  before  me. 
He  had  fine  features,  black  hair,  blue  eyes,  fair 
skin,  a  thin  straight  nose,  and  delicate  ears.  He 
wore  a  black  mustache  and  had  a  full  head  of 
hair  which  appears  to  have  been   unruly. 

Why  didn't  I  get  from  Miss  Hinds  the  informa- 
tion I  now  seek  about  her  brother?  There  is  no 
satisfactory  answer  to  the  question,  as  I  look 
back  now.  From  where  I  stood  then,  the  answer 
seems  reasonable  to  me.  It  never  occurred  to  me 
that  I  would  write  this  story.  At  that  time  there 
was  no  story  because  I  had  done  nothing  to 
justify  one,  and  I  was  not  yet  a  writer.  Even  had 
I  thought  of  it,  I  would  have  considered  that  I 
had  plenty  of  time,  for  youth  is  not  conscious  of 
the  brevity  of  life.  Moreover,  I  had  just  married, 
and  at  such  a  time  each  day  seems  sufficient  imto 
itself. 

Miss  Hinds  did  not  remain  in  San  Antonio 
very  long.  It  was  probably  in  January  of  1917 
that  she  went  to  Los  Angeles  and  took  residence 
at  1316  South  Vermont  Avenue.  Her  first  letter 
was  dated  February  18,  1917. 

Then  a  letter  arrived  postmarked  Burlington, 
Vermont,  April  18,  1918.  It  marked  the  end  of 
the  trail.    Inside  was  an  undated  memorandum 


VERMONT    by    John    Updike 


HERE  green  is  king  again, 

Usurping  honest  men. 

Like  Brazilian  cathedrals  gone  under  to  creepers. 

Gray  silos  mourn  their  keepers. 

Ski  tows 

And  shy  cows 

Alone  pin  the  ragged  slopes  to  the  earth 

Of  profitable  worth. 

Hawks,  professors. 

And  summering  ministers 

Roost  on  the  mountainsides  of  poverty 

And  sniff  the  poetry, 

And  every  year 
The  big  black  bear, 

Slavering  through  the  woods  with  scrolling  mouth, 
Comes  further  south. 


68 


THE     SEARCH     FOR     WILLIAM     E.     HINDS 


irom  her  to  me,  which  read:  "I  enclosed  your 
note  in  directed  envelope  so  if  anything  happens 
to  me,  it  will  be  sent  to  you.  If  you  receive  this, 
you  will  know  that  I  have  passed  away  and  you 
are  under  no  further  obligation.  Consider  the 
matter  closed  as  there  is  no  one  else  that  Avould 
be  interested." 

The  note  she  enclosed  was  for  3265  with  5  per 
cent  interest.  Endorsements  on  the  back  show 
that  on  April  17,  1917,  I  paid  $100  principal 
and  .$16.56  interest,  leaving  a  balance  of  $165 
due  in  six  months  with  interest  "at  6%  or  7%." 
The  last  endorsement  is  dated  October  11,  1917, 
with  a  payment  of  $90  on  the  face  of  the  note 
plus  $5.68,  leaving  a  balance  of  $75. 

That  $75  has  never  been  paid  to  anyone  con- 
nected with  Hinds.  It  has,  however,  been  paid 
over  and  over  to  those  who  needed  it,  and  it 
will  be  paid  again  in  the  future  as  Hinds  would 
have  wanted  it. 

The  act  of  this  man  is  the  unsolved  mystery 
of  my  life.  I  have  never  been  able  to  understand 
what  motivated  him.  I  find  it  easy  enough  to 
write  a  check  for  some  student  in  temporary 
need,  one  that  I  can  see  and  know,  and  I  have 
written  a  good  many  such  checks.  But  I  still 
cannot  understand  how  a  man  in  New  York  City 
could  reach  far  down  in  Texas,  pluck  a  tired  kid 
off  a  Georgia  stock  in  a  stumpy  field,  and  stay 
with  him  without  asking  questions  for  eleven 
years,  until  death  dissolved  the  relationship. 

He  did  not  live  long  enough  to  see  any  sign 
that  the  investment  he  made  was  not  a  bad  one. 
In  1918  I  became  a  member  of  the  faculty  of 
the  University  of  Texas.  My  development  there 
was  slow— I  have  been  late  all  my  life— and  it  was 
not  until  1931  that  I  published  my  first  book, 
The  Great  Plains.  Others  followed  in  due  course, 
but  it  was  not  until  after  1950  that  things  began 
to  happen  which  might  have  gratified  William 
E.  Hinds.  When  these  marks  of  recognition 
came,  my  satisfaction  w^as  always  tinged  with 
regret    that    he    could    not    know    about    them. 

William  E.  Hinds  was  a  great  reader,  and  he 
probably   was    aware    of   Shelley's    ironic    lines: 

The  seed  ye  sow,  another  reaps; 
The  wealth   ye    find,    another   keeps; 
The  robes  ye  weave,   another  wears; 
The    arms    ye    forge,    another    bears. 

I  have  reaped  where  he  sowed,  and  I  wear 
what  he  wove.  Indeed,  I  keep  a  part  of  the 
wealth  he  found,  but  I  have  tried  to  keep  a  little 
of  the  spirit  with  which  he  used  it.  His  spirit  has 
hovered  over  me  all  my  life.  His  name  appears 
in  the  Preface  or  Dedication  of  my  major  books. 


I  cannot  now  better  describe  what  he  did  for  me 
than  I  did  in  TJie  Texas  Rangers: 

To  the  memory  of 
WILLIAM  ELLERY  HINDS 

He  fitted  the  arrow  to  the  bow 

set  the  mark  and  insisted 

that  the  aim  be  true 

His  greatness  of  heart  is  known 
best  to  me. 

This  is  the  end  of  the  story.  I  appeal  to  those 
who  read  it,  for  more  information  about  William 
E.  Hinds.  I  would  like  to  know  when  and  where 
he  was  born,  where  he  was  educated,  and  what 
occupation  he  followed.  If  he  helped  other  boys, 
as  his  sister  stated,  I  would  like  to  know  who  they 
are  and  what  they  did.  His  will  might  reveal 
something  about  his  interests  and  activities. 

I  have  consulted  with  private  detective  agen- 
cies about  making  a  search,  but  found  them  just 
as  vague  about  what  they  would  do  as  they  were 
specific  about  fees.  I  admit  that  this  investiga- 
tion should  have  been  made  long  ago,  but  it  was 
something  easy  to  postpone.  It  might  have  been 
possible  to  make  contact  with  the  Cortelyou 
family,  but  I  neglected  to  do  it.  While  in  New 
York  once,  I  took  a  taxi  to  the  place  where 
William  E.  Hinds  lived  in  Brooklyn,  and  I  ran 
the  index  of  the  Neiv  York  Times  in  search  of  his 
obituary,  but  could  not  find  his  name.  In  Jan- 
uary 1961  I  had  a  bout  with  the  hospital  and  the 
surgeons,  and  came  pretty  close  to  losing.  This 
was  a  warning  that  I  could  no  longer  delay;  as 
soon  as  I  was  able,  I  went  to  work  in  earnest. 

I  now  summarize  the  facts  I  have  about  him. 
His  full  name  was  William  Ellery  Hinds.  For 
several  years  after  1904  he  lived  at  489  Classon 
Avenue,  Brooklyn,  New  York.  He  later  moved  to 
another  address  which  I  do  not  have.  The  only 
relatives  he  ever  mentioned  were  his  sister  and 
some  cousins,  one  of  whom  was  George  B.  Cor- 
telyou, Secretary  of  the  Treasury  under  Theodore 
Roosevelt  after  1907.  I  do  not  know  the  exact 
date  of  his  death,  but  it  must  have  been  in  the 
autumn  of  1915  because  my  note  made  out  to 
Ida  K.  Hinds  bears  the  date  of  January  25,  1916. 

The  meager  results  of  my  search  thus  far  sug- 
gest that  if  I  remain  silent,  William  E.  Hinds 
may  be  forgotten.  I  want  him  to  be  remembered. 
Finally,  it  seems  to  me  that  what  he  did  may 
encourage  others  to  follow  his  example,  and  thus 
perpetuate  his  influence.  He  would  want  no 
better   monument. 

Anyone  having  information  about  William  E. 
Hinds  should  address  W.  P.  Webb,  University 
Station,  Austin,  Texas.— The  Editors 

Harper's  Mnguziue,  July  1961 


William  E.  Hinds 


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BoaoHoa  BROOKtSN 

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Scallop  Shell  on  the  ocean  floor  ► 


How  a 

Scallop  Shell 

became 

a  world-famous 

trademark 


•  Seashells  carried  halfway  around  the  world— from 
an  ocean  floor  in  the  Orient  to  Marcus  Samuel's  curio 
shop  near  the  London  docks— started  a  chain  of  events 
that  created  one  of  today's  best-known  trademarks. 

Sailors  coming  olT  their  ships  sold  the  seashells  they 
had  coUected  to  the  curio  shop  owner.  When  used  on 
ornamental  boxes  and  trinkets,  the  shells  found  favor 
in  mid-Victorian  eyes,  and  the  merchant  imported 
thousands  upon  thousands  of  shells. 

Later,  the  sons  of  Marcus  Samuel  gave  this  Far 
Eastern  trade  a  new  dimension  by  shipping  the  first 
bulk  cargo  of  kerosene  through  the  Suez  Canal.  They 
gave  seashell  names  to  their  ships,  and  when  a  com- 
pany was  formed  to  engage  in  the  oil  business,  the 
scallop  shell  became  its  trademark. 

Perhaps  it  was  out  of  sentiment  for  their  father's 
beginnings  that  Marcus  Samuel's  sons  thought  of  the 
shell.  Yet  their  choice  proved  most  appropriate  for  the 
enterprise  that  was  to  become  the  Shell  Companies. 

Since  antiquity  the  shell  has  symbolized  the  sea, 
the  voyage  and  the  quest.  Venus,  born  of  the  sea,  was 
identified  with  the  shell.  It  was  the  badge  of  pilgrims 
to  the  shrine  of  the  apostle,  St.  James --and  of  Cru- 
saders in  their  quest  to  the  Holy  Land. 

In  our  day,  as  name  and  trademark  of  the  Shell 
Companies,  the  shell  continues  to  be  the  sign  of  the 
quest.  Shell  men  search  for  oil  in  forests,  deserts  and 
under  the  ocean  floor.  Then  the  quest  goes  on  in  Shell 
laboratories  where  research  people  seek  new  products 
from  petroleum. 

Examples:  man-made  rubber  that  duplicates  tree- 
grown  rubber  for  the  first  time.  New  insecticides  to  aid 
the  farmer  in  his  age-old  battle  against  pests.  Adhe- 
sives  so  tough  they  replace  rivets  in  airplanes.  And, 
of  course,  always  finer  gasolines  and  motor  oils. 

When  you  see  the  Shell  sign  think  of  it  as  the  symbol 
of  the  quest  for  new  ideas,  new  products  and  new  ways 
to  serve  you.  The  Shell  Companies:  Shell  Oil  Com- 
pany; Shell  Chemical  Company;  Shell  Pipe  Line  Cor- 
poration; Shell  Development  Company;  Shell  Oil 
Company  of  Canada,  Ltd.  cshell  o.u  company  i96i 


lUt*, 


,UH/ 


'HPJj^ 


SIGN     OF    A    BETTER     FUTURE    FOR    YOU 


Figure  1.  I.  C.  I.  Building,  Melbourne. 
Australia:  Bates,  Smart  and  McCut- 
cheon,   architects 


WOLFGANG    SIEVERS 


THE   SUITCASE    AND   THE    BUNCH    OF    GRAPES 


«L..-j. 


Figure  2.  Restaurant  pavilion,  Ida 
(iason  Ciallaway  Ciardens,  Georgia; 
Riciiard  Aeck,   architect 


GREY    VILLET— LIFE   ©    1958   TIME   INC. 


ROBIN    BOYD 


THE  NEW  VISION 

IN  ARCHITECTURE 


Yesterday's  Functionalist  architecture  with  its 

rigorous  dogma  and  moral  self-righteousness  is 

giving  way  to  a  neiv  and  freer  kind  of  monolithic 

design  .  .  .  full  of  surprises  and  invention. 

TH  E  men  who  create  the  man-made  back- 
ground of  lile  are  of  three  kinds:  the 
Haves,  the  Have-nots,  and  the  Makers— of  taste. 
At  this  time  the  Have-nots  are,  as  always,  creat- 
ing a  cheerless  carnival  atmosphere  at  every 
opportunity;  the  Haves  are  intent  on  composure 
as  usual;  and  the  Makers  of  taste— always  rest- 
lessly exploring  some  fresh  field  of  design— have 
lately  rediscovered  an  ancient  artistic  truth 
that  puts  them  in  open  revolt  against  both  the 
others. 

To  understand  this  revolt  it  is  necessary  first 
to  examine  briefly  what  they  are  revolting 
against. 

Nearly  all  ordinary  design  which  makes  up 
the  everyday  background  of  modern  life  is  the 
work  of  people  who  rely  not  on  ideas  but  on 
taste,  whether  they  have  it  or  not.  Those  who 
have  not  are  engaged  now  as  ever  in  their 
honorary  task  of  making  all  they  touch  bright 
and  gay.  To  do  this  they  now  can  call  on  a 
wider  range  of  materials,  textures,  and  pigments 
than  have  ever  before  been  available  to  them. 
But  their  principles  and  methods  are  still  much 
the  same  as  when  they  used  fretwork  and  gar- 
goyles. Their  object  is  to  keep  the  eye  enter- 
tained, filled  to  capacity  with  as  many  contrasts 
of  shape  and  color  as  possible.  A  home  is  made 
more  diverting  if  the  brickwork  is  relieved  by 
panels  of  stonework,  if  the  paintwork  is  con- 
trasted by  a  few  walls  of  bold  art  wallpaper,  if 
the    kitchen    is    custom-striped    in    multicolored 


tiles,  and  the  hard  industrial  lines  of  the  equip- 
ment are  softened  by  the  popular  new  lingerie 
look. 

Thus  the  taste  Have-nots  create  their  con- 
temporary carnival  by  constantly  dividing  things 
up:  the  artistic  entity  of  the  house  is  first  divided 
into  a  number  of  individually  conceived,  unre- 
lated spaces— for  instance,  a  feminine  master- 
bedroom,  a  masculine  boy's  room,  and  a  neuter 
living-room.  Then  each  space  is  splintered  into 
a  number  of  separate  effects:  rugged  stone  fire- 
place contrasted  with  gleaming  metal  contrasted 
with  flounces  of  candy  stripes.  At  all  costs  they 
want  to  avoid  the  boring  monotony  of  artistic 
unity.  They  want  as  many  elements  as  the  eye 
can  take  in:  colors,  ornamental  surfaces,  and 
symbols  of  good  living. 

The  social  and  economic  influences  at  work 
here  may  be  obvious  enough,  but  the  artistic 
origins  are  more  oblique.  The  presently  desired 
state  of  restless  richness  in  contemporary  home 
design  is  largely  the  illogical  conchision  of  the 
sober,  austere,  even  puritanical,  movement  in 
design  Avhicli  might  be  called  the  first  j^hasc  of 
modern  architecture. 

This  first  phase  was  established  about  the 
beginning  of  this  century  and  had  the  great 
crusading  idea  of  cleaning  up  the  artistic  mess 
of  Victorian  design.  This  meant  two  principal 
fights.  The  first  was  to  free  buildings  from  the 
obligation  to  follow  any  preconceived  forms,  al- 
lowing them  to  take  any  practical  shajie  they 
wished.  For  instance,  the  modern  architect 
fiercely  denounced  the  idea  that  a  product  of 
the  machine  age  could  reasonably  be  shajied  like 
Roman  baths— as  in  Pennsylvania  Station.  The 
second  fight  was  to  set  free  the  technological 
advances  of  the  nineteenth  century  which  had 
been    suffocating   under   various    theatrical   dis- 


74 


NEW     VISION     IN      ARCHITECTURE 


guises.  For  example,  the  nineteenth  century  had 
learned  to  build  steel-iramed  skyscrapers,  but 
convention  still  demanded  that  the  steel  be 
dressed  to  look  like  solid  masonry— as  in  the 
Municipal  Building,  New  York,  or  practically 
any  other  early  skyscraper  you  can  think  of 
outside  Chicago. 

The  most  noticeable  feature  of  the  earliest 
modern  architecture  was  a  moralistic  elimina- 
tion of  ornament,  but  there  was  something  else 
equally  radical  and  equally  significant:  the 
idea  of  separating  the  parts.  Perhaps  the  best 
example  is  to  be  found  in  the  Baidraus  at  Dessau, 
the  famous  pioneer  modern  building  designed 
by  Walter  Gropius  in  1926.  In  his  basic  design 
Gropius  provided  for  revolutionary  separation 
of  the  elements  composing  the  school,  each  of 
which  was  encouraged  to  take  its  own  func- 
tional shape.  The  Bauhaus  workshop  was  a  huge 
glass  box.  The  students'  studios  occuj:)ied  a 
multistory,  balconied  block.  The  cafeteria  was 
long  and  low.  These  three  clearly,  proudly 
separated  parts  were  joined  by  other  minor 
functional  elements,  and  the  whole  complex  was 
arranged  into  a  balanced  composition.  But  it 
still  was  a  complex— an  assemblage  of  deliber- 
ately articulated,  deliberately  different  things, 
each  provided  with  its  own  separate  expression 
and  separate  entity  within  the  composition. 

The  taste  Have-nots  developed  or  perverted 
this  idea  of  articidation  and  separate  expression 
of  elements,  but  they  coidd  not  accept  the  dis- 
cipline of  the  rest  of  early  modern  architectural 
theory.  And  so  today  they  go  even  further  than 
their  grandfathers  in  their  enjoyment  of  pieces 
and  their  dislike  of  wholes. 

The  Haves,  the  men  of  good  taste,  on  the 
other  hand,  are  very  concerned  about  composi- 
tion. They  are  not  especially  interested  in  the 
theory  of  giving  separate  identity  to  different 
parts.  In  general  they  are  far  more  interested  in 
the  appearance  of  buildings  than  in  what  goes 
on  in  them  or  any  theory  about  them.  They  will 
make  different  parts  look  the  same  if  it  pleases 
them,  and  they  will  break  one  part  up  into  a 
dozen  visual  elements  if  it  seems  to  look  better 


Robin  Boyd  is  an  Australian  architect,  a  mem- 
ber of  the  firm  of  Grounds,  Rombere;  and  Boyd,  and 
a  lecturer  at  the  University  of  Melbourne.  He  was 
Visiting  Bcmis  Professor  of  Architecture  at  MIT 
in  1956-57  and  in  1960  was  elected  Honorary  Fel- 
low of  the  American  Institute  nl  Architects.  His 
books  include  "Victorian  Modern"  and,  most  re- 
cently, "The  Australian   Ugliness." 


that  way.  All  they  insist  on  is  having  a  number 
of  contrasted  parts— not  too  many,  not  too  few 
— Av'hich  they  can  then  arrange  with  taste  into  a 
balanced  composition. 

But  the  third  group,  the  creative  designers 
who  eventually  make  taste  (if  it  doesn't  break 
them  in  the  meantime),  are  now  looking  for 
an  answer  to  the  meaning  of  design  which  is 
not  to  be  found  in  the  carnival  nor  in  composi- 
tion. They  seem  to  be  looking  back  a  long  way 
behind  the  birth  of  modern  architecture  and 
the  theories  of  articulation  and  functional  ex- 
pression, back  to  the  birth  of  classical  design 
concepts,  to  find  some  elixir  of  design,  of  beauty, 
of  Platonic  perfection  of  form. 

MARRIAGE     TO     A     MONOLITH 

WH  A  T  is  happening  among  the  creative 
architects  today  oddly  recalls  what  hap- 
pened about  1900  when  the  idea  of  functional 
simplicity  broke  through  into  practical  applica- 
tion and  modern  architecture  officially  arrived. 
In  1900  the  Functionalist  idea  was  not  new;  the 
seeds  had  been  sQwn  carefully  fifty  years  earlier. 
All  that  was  new  was  the  strict,  literal,  unbend- 
ing interpretation  of  the  idea. 

Similarly  today  the  one  consistent  idea  which 
seems  to  be  taking  shape  in  the  mists  of  modern 
architectural  thought  is  not  a  new  idea,  but  a 
new,  literal,  unbending  interpretation  of  another 
old  idea.  This  is  the  classical  concept  of  a  total 
unification  by  design. 

Total  is  the  important  word  here,  just  as  total 
simplicity  was  the  key  to  the  first  revolution  of 
modern  architecture.  Serious  architects  have 
always  worked  to  a  theme  of  sorts  and  have  al- 
ways believed  their  buildings  to  be  reasonably 
simple.  Even  the  most  frenzied  of  Victorian 
decorators  liked  to  think  of  their  works  as 
irreducible. 

But  it  is  the  degree  of  simplicity  and  unity 
that  matters.  The  early  modern  architects  went 
back  to  the  utilitarian  tradition  of  barns  and 
bridges  in  their  absolute  ban  on  ornamental 
effects.  Now  some  fifty  years  later  an  equally 
drastic  and  fundamental  revision  is  overtaking 
the  popular  form  of  architecture:  starting  some- 
time about  1955  every  new  building  of  self-im- 
portance sought  to  be  a  single  thing.  It  was  no 
longer  content  just  to  be  composed,  integrated, 
and  co-ordinated  by  a  regular  "module"  (unit 
of  measure)  or  an  even  rhythm  of  similar  ele- 
ments. It  was  not  content  to  be  a  balanced  as- 
semblage of  parts— like  the  Bauhaus  or  the 
United  Nations  headquarters.    It  was  not  con- 


75 


tent  to  give  the  suggestion  of  organic  growth- 
like  Rockeleller  Center.  Suddenly  every  im- 
portant building  wanted  to  have  a  monolithic 
idea. 

It  would  be  impossible  to  put  a  date  on  the 
beginning  of  this  monolithic  movement.  Perhaps 
its  first  spectacular  manifestation  was  the  dome- 
shaped  Kresge  Auditorium  at  the  Massachusetts 
Institute  of  Technology,  designed  by  Eero 
Saarinen  in  1953,  a  monolithic  concept  if  ever 
there  was  one,  and  in  strong  contrast  to  the 
Avandering,  if  controlled,  compositions  of 
Saarinen's  earlier  successes.  But  long  before 
this,  Frank  Lloyd  Wright  had  published  his 
designs  for  the  most  monolithic  of  all  his  Avorks, 
the  Guggenheim  Museum,  and  years  before  that, 
in  1927,  Buckminster  Fuller  produced  his  early 
designs  for  a  "Dymaxion"  industrialized  house,  a 
six-sided  box  hung  on  a  central  mast.  In  fact 
one  can  quite  easily  trace  isolated  origins  back 
through  Eric  Mendlesohn's  sketches  of  plastic 
one-piece  structures  in  the  1914  \s'ar  period  to 
the  beginnings  of  modern  design.  But  gradually 
in  the  past  five  years  the  monolithic  idea  has 
become  a  passion,  or  a  fashion,  and  the  various 
means  now  used  by  architects  to  create  the  de- 
sired singleness  of  effect  account  for  most  of 
the  apparently  unrelated  personal  styles  of  the 
moment. 

THE      SUITCASE      AND      THE 
BUNCH     OF     GRAPES 

THERE  are  two  main  basically  different 
ways  to  make  a  monolithic  effect.  The 
most  common  method  is  to  use  a  box.  One  se- 
lects a  likely-looking  single  container  and  fits 
into  it  all  the  necessary  parts  of  the  building, 
like  packing  a  suitcase.  As  it  happens,  the  most 
common  box  usually  does  resemble  the  propor- 
tions of  a  businesslike  suitcase:  the  international 
modern  glass-box  office  block  (Figure  1).  The 
other  Avay  to  look  monolithic  is  to  be  cellular, 
like  a  honeycomb,  or  a  bunch  of  grapes.  One 
selects  a  likely-looking  unit  of  space  for  the 
building— say,  the  bedroom-bathroom  unit  in 
a  motel,  or  the  classroom  in  a  school— and  one 
makes  the  whole  building  a  muhi])k'  of  similar 
cells,  with  no  distractions  (Figure  2).  This 
technique  usually  turns  out  to  be  more  practical 
than  the  most  flexil^le  of  suitcases,  because  the 
grape  units  may  be  placed  anyAvhere  that  func- 
tion dictates,  and  the  over-all  shape  of  the 
building  may  spra^vl  anywhere  that  the  occupiers 
desire,  without  the  luiitv  i)eing  destroved.  For 
the  bunch   of  grapes   is  still   a  single   thing  no 


l|4IIIIIIIIIMIIIi*ll**i» ifinitimiiliHl 

[iiiiKiiiiniiiiiiiiiiiliiiiitlililiiiililliiii 


BILL     ENCDAHL,     HEDRICH-BLESSINC 


Figure   3.     Theatre,    Marina    City    project,    Chicago; 
Bertrand  Goldberg  Associates,  architect 


ROBERT     DAMORA 


Figure  4.  Spray  House  #1;  John  M.  Johansen,  architect 


Figure  5.    Bubble  House,  Hobc  Sound,  Florida;  Eliot 
Noyes  and  Associates,  architect 


76 


Figure  6.    Decorative  sunshades,  U.  S.  pavilion.  New 
Delhi,  India,  exhibition;  Minoru  Yamasaki,  architect 


^^^^0Cm 


Figure    7.     I'.    S.    Consulate,     labnz,    Iran;     Ethvard 
Lanabee  Barnes,  architect 


JOSEPH      \V.      MOLITOR 


Figure  8.    Sarasota   High   School,   Sarasota,   Florida; 
Paul  Rudolph,  architect 


matter  how  ungeometrkally  and  disorderly  it 
grows. 

Each  of  these  two  principal  means  of  acliieving 
a  tight,  intense  tniity  in  the  building  has  many 
possible  variations.  The  suitcase  may  be  pur- 
pose-shaped in  the  way  of  a  violin  case,  hinting  at 
the  things  it  contains,  like  the  theatre  in  the 
Marina  City  project  in  Chicago  (Figure  3),  or 
it  may  dissolve  into  quite  a  loose,  flexible  thing 
like  a  plastic  bag  full  of  mixed  fruit,  as  John 
M.  Johansen  has  demonstrated  in  his  sug- 
gestion for  a  hypothetical  house  of  free-formed 
concrete  shells  (Figure  4).  Modern  engineering 
is  continuously  enlarging  the  range  of  economical 
and  practical  container  shapes.  Concrete  sprayed 
on  an  inflated  balloon  makes  a  practical  sack 
to  cover  a  small  house  in  Florida  (Figure  5),  and 
a  membrane  of  metal  woven  like  fabric  and 
propped  up  at  one  end  makes  a  sort  of  giant  car- 
pet bag  to  cover  a  music  bowl  in  Melbourne. 

Sometimes  the  container  bears  little  relation 
to  the  contents  and  is  in  fact  deliberately  ir- 
relevant  and  disguising,  like  the  gift-wrapping 
style  of  the  concrete  grilles  used  by  some  archi- 
tects. And  sometimes  the  container  may  take 
a  proudly  exotic  shape,  symbolic  or  evocative  of 
some  aspect  of  the  building's  purpose,  like  a 
rather  cheap  perftmie  bottle  or,  regrettably,  a 
number  of  recent  churches.  And  sometimes,  when 
one  suitcase  cannot  practically  hold  all  the  re- 
quired elements  of  the  btiilding,  the  architect 
resorts  to  using  a  few  extra,  smaller  containers, 
but  he  makes  each  of  them  a  miniature  of  the 
dominating  one.  matching  in  shape  and  ma- 
terials. He  thus  achieves  the  unity  of  a  porter's 
trolleyful  of  matched  luggage,  or,  if  you  prefer, 
a  family  of  mother  duck  and  ducklings.  But 
whatever  strange  shape  the  container  takes,  or 
whatever  combined  form— matched  luggage,  a 
family,  a  bunch  of  grapes— the  important  thing  is 
that  the  noini  is  singular:  a  number  of  things  has 
been  made  into  a  singular  thing. 

The  individtial  grape  in  the  bunch  may  also  be 
exotic  fruit,  as  in  the  purely  decorative  and 
frivolous  U.  S.  pavilion  at  the  \Vorld  Agricultural 
Fair  in  New  Delhi,  where  Minoru  Yamasaki 
used  a  golden  Fiberglas  Eastern  dome  as  a 
sunshading  grape.  He  could  have  added  as 
many  domes  as  required  by  the  exhibition 
authorities  without  embarrassment  to  the  bunch 
(Figure  6).  Or  the  grape  may  be  slightly  less 
exotic  and  more  functional  as  in  the  U.  S.  Con- 
sulate at  Tabriz,  Iran  (Figure  7),  or  not  exotic 
at  all  and  convincingly  practical,  as  in  the  folded 
concrete  units  of  Paul  Rudolph's  Sarasota  High 
School  (Figure  8)  in  Florida. 


77 


Again,  the  grape  may  be  used  as  a  practical 
solution  to  the  industrialization  of  house  build- 
ing, for  a  house  might  be  mass-produced  like  a 
car  if  it  could  be  broken  do^\n  into  a  number 
of  standardized  units  of  space  enclosure  each 
about  the  size  of  a  car,  as  proposed  by  George 
Nelson  and  Gordon  Chadwick. 

TWINSHIP     AND     CIRCLE 

THERE  are  of  course  other  variations  of 
these  two  main  techniques.  Twins  are 
popular.  A  few  years  ago,  if  an  architect  had 
found  it  necessary  to  build  two  similar  buildings 
—say,  apartment  blocks— beside  each  other,  he 
would  have  gone  out  of  his  way  to  avoid  what 
was  considered  one  of  the  worst  design  faux  pas: 
duality.  Probably  he  would  have  made  one  of 
the  buildings  tall  and  thin,  the  other  short  and 
fat;  he  would  have  composed  them  as  two 
things,  leading  your  eye  gently  from  the  squat  to 
the  tall  one.  Now,  as  proposed  in  Bertrand 
Goldberg's  twin  sixty-story  apartment  cylinders 
at  the  Marina  City  development  in  Chicago 
(Figure  9),  the  architect  makes  the  two  things 
identical  so  that  they  are  in  effect  one  thing: 
a  pair. 

The  archetype  of  modern  twins  was  perhaps 
the  Mies  van  der  Rohe  apartments  of  1956  on 
Lake  Shore  Drive,  Chicago.  But  then  in  a 
sense  the  whole  monolithic  movement  A\as  begun 
by  Mies.  For  it  ^\as  he  A\ho  reversed  the  slogan 
of  early  modern  architecture:  "Form  follo^vs 
function.'  The  architect's  duty  in  the  techno- 
logical age,  said  Mies,  is  to  build  perfect  struc- 
ture and  form.  Then  function  ^vill  fit  it.  Mies 
spends  his  creative  life  perfecting  the  technology 
and  character  of  the  glass  suitcase  building  as  a 
kind  of  nonemotional  abstract  poetry.  But  mean- 
^\•hile  his  reversal  of  the  old  Functionalist  prin- 
ciple had  set  others  off,  freed  of  inhibitions,  on 
a  delightful  search  for  beautiful  form.  And  in 
seemingly  no  time  many  architects  in  many  parts 
of  the  Avorld  came  back  from  the  search  tri- 
umphantly carrying  a  circle. 

It  is  no  coincidence,  and  no  simple  fashion, 
that  the  circle  no^v  is  almost  as  common  a  shape 
in  creative  architecture  as  the  rectansrle  ^\'as  a 
few  years  ago.  The  circle  is  translated  into  the 
three  dimensions  of  a  usable  building  in  a 
dozen  ways.  It  becomes  a  cone,  or  a  drum,  or— 
most  frequently— a  ring,  as  in  a  fairly  classic 
and  symbolic  example:  the  fallout-proof  school 
designed  by  Albert  Sigal,  Jr.  for  the  California 
Council  of  the  American  Institute  of  Architects' 
Committee  on  Nuclear  Energy  (Figure  10). 


BILL     FNCDAHL,      HEDRICH-BLESSINC 


Figure  9  (above) .  Apartment  blocks,  Marina  Citv 
project.  Chicago:  Bertxand  Goldberg  .Associates, 
architect.  Figure  10  (below).  Fallout-proof  school, 
Albert  E.  Sigal  Jr.,  designer 


78 


1I\/\H     KORAB 


Figure  11  (above).  Skyscraper,  Detroit;  Minoru  Yama- 
saki,  architect.  Figure  12  (below).  Proposed  Hori/on 
City;    Lucio   Closta,    planner 


RAY     MANLEY 


The  emergence  ot  the  circle  Irom  the  rec- 
tilinear background  oi  modern  architecture  is 
not  really  sinprising.  This  new  monolithism  h 
a  reaction  against  early  modern  architecture's 
often  overintense  worship  of  the  machine  and 
the  right  angle.  This  is  a  more  scholarly,  sen- 
tentious, classical  approach,  frankly  open  to 
inspiration  from  the  past. 

One  of  the  first  moves  was  to  compress  the 
ubiquitous  rectangle  into  the  tighter  geometrical 
shape  of  the  square— hence  the  number  of  new 
tower  buildings  that  are  exactly  square  in  plan, 
like  Yamasaki's  Michigan  Consolidated  Gas 
building  in  Detroit  (Figure  11).  But  a  circle  is 
far  better  still.  The  circle  is  the  most  self-con- 
tained, precise,  concise  shape,  recurring  at  in- 
tervals throughout  history  in  the  plan  of  special 
public  buildings  from  Stonehenge  on.  Turned 
into  three-dimensional  form,  as  in  a  dome,  the 
circle  suggests  the  arch  of  the  heavens,  the  sphere, 
the  divine  form  of  a  drop  of  water,  or  the  earth, 
or  the  universe. 

The  mystical  connotations  here  are  not  ir- 
relevant. Partial  responsibility  for  the  present 
rash  of  circles  must  be  accepted  by  Professor 
Rudolf  Wittkower,  whose  learned  treatise  on 
the  mystical  influence,  during  the  Renaissance, 
of  Pythagorean  and  Vitruvian  theories  of  form. 
Architectural  Principles  in  the  Age  of  Human- 
ism, has  been  required  reading  in  most  archi- 
tectural schools  for  a  decade  or  so.  The  ancients 
saw  cosmic  significance  in  involved  mathematical 
analogies  between  music,  geometry,  and  the 
human  body.  They  would  have  delighted  in 
the  form  of  hundreds  of  new  variations  on  the 
circle  and  the  dome  which  are  now  appearing 
every  day:  for  instance,  the  Civil  War  Centen- 
nial Dome  in  Virginia;  or  a  dozen  projects 
for  dome-homes;  or  the  two  complementary 
buildings  for  Brasilia's  houses  of  parliament  by 
Oscar  Niemeyer— one  a  conventional  dome,  the 
other  a  matching  upside-down  bowl. 

SINGLENESS 

OUT      OF      CONFUSION 

BESIDES,  mystiques  apart,  the  circle  and 
the  dome  are  economically  justifiable.  They 
are  nature's  way  of  enclosing  the  most  within  the 
least  surface.  ^Vorking  without  a  trace  of  mys- 
ticism and  strictly  within  rational  engineering 
principles,  the  Italian  architect-engineer  Pier 
Luigi  Nervi  frequently  produces  a  circular  plan 
and  a  domed  form  for  his  intricate  ventures  in 
concrete,  seen  at  their  best  in  the  Rome  Olympic 
Games  stadia. 


I 


79 


Scale  affects  all  architectural  thinking,  old 
as  well  as  new.  If,  for  instance,  you  asked  an 
architect  of  the  early  high  Functionalist  era 
to  create  for  you  a  model  community,  he 
would  design  separately  the  commercial,  indus- 
trial, cultural,  religious,  and  domestic  areas  of 
the  town,  and  give  all  these  separate  architectural 
expressions  on  his  drawing  board.  But  he  would 
probably  be  content  to  leave  each  separate  house 
as  a  simple  block.  However,  when  you  asked 
him  to  detail  a  house,  he  would  design  as  sepa- 
rate boxes  the  living,  sleeping,  and  service  areas 
and  the  garden  shed.  Finally,  when  he  concen- 
trated on  the  shed,  he  woidd  design  separately 
the  places  for  the  hand  tools  and  the  heavier 
equipment,  giving  them  different  expression,  and 
"would  probably  provide  a  circular  place  for 
rolling  the  hose.  By  this  illustration  I  mean  to 
suggest  that  the  idea  of  separating  different 
functional  parts  was  essentially  not  a  practical 
scheme  so  much  as  an  artistic  idea  which  could 
be  expanded  or  contracted  in  interpretation  to 
suit  the  will  or  whim  of  the  working  architect. 

In  a  similar  way,  but  in  reverse,  scale  affects 
the  artistic  idea  of  monolithism.  Certainly  it  is 
not  hard  for  anyone  to  imagine  a  monolithic 
concept  for  a  single  building  which  is  to  function 
simply  as  a  small  shrine— although  few  would 
turn  the  suitcase  into  such  a  glamorous  evening 
bag  as  Philip  Johnson  has  made  the  Rappites' 
memorial  in  Nc^\■  Harmony,  Indiana  (Figure 
14). 

But  as  the  movement  develops  and  designers 
keep  tightening  up  their  architectural  themes, 
it  is  seen  that  more  and  more  complex  functions 
can  be  packed  into  bigger  and  bigger  suitcases. 
The  circle  stretches  to  take  in  a  ^vhole  jet  airport, 
as  proposed  for  Kansas  City  (Figure  13),  or  a 
college  building  for  six  thousand  students,  as  in 
Raleigh,  North  Carolina,  or  a  whole  city  as  in 
the  Horizon  City  project  proposed  for  Texas  by 
the  Brazilian  planner  Lucio  Costa  (Figure  12). 
It  is  clear,  however,  that  even  the  biggest  suit- 
cases or  grape-bunches  have  their  practical 
limitations— illustrated  in  the  ragged  edges  of 
the  proposed  Horizon  City  scheme  (which  is  now 
in  the  planning  stage).  Only  in  a  dictatorship 
or  a  classical  Utopia  would  you  expect  everybody 
to  conform  uncomplainingly  to  some  allotted 
compartment  in  a  cosmic  dream. 

The  suitcase  and  grape-bunch,  however,  are 
not  all  the  new  movement  has  to  offer.  There 
are  other  methods  of  drawing  an  effect  of 
singleness  out  of  complexity.  One  of  them 
which  grew  up  alongside  the  suitcase  and  grape- 
bunch  is  on  the  face  of  it  entirely  opposed  to 


Figure  13  (above).  Proposed  jet  airport,  Kansas  City; 
Cooper-Robinson-Carlson-O'Brien,  architects.  Figure 
14  (below).  Memorial  to  the  Rappites,  New  Harmony, 
Indiana;    Philip  Johnson,   architect 


JAMES     K.     MELLOW 


NEW     VISION 


ARCHITECTURE 


MARC     NEUe 


Figure  15.    La  Tourette,   Dominican  monastery,   France;   Le   Corbusier,   architect 


them.  It  is  seen  at  its  best  in  the  latest  building 
of  one  of  this  century's  greatest  taste-makers: 
La  Tourette,  a  Dominican  monastery  in  France 
by  Le  Corbusier  (Figure  15).  At  first  glance, 
it  has  the  faint  suggestion  of  a  suitcase,  like 
most  Le  Corbusier  works,  in  the  over-all  recti- 
linear form.  But  it  is  certainly  not  a  case  you'd 
be  proud  to  claim  in  the  baggage  room;  it  seems 
to  have  been  deliberately  broken  into  bits.  For 
Le  Corbusier  is  not  attemjDting  to  make  a  single 
thing  in  the  direct  visual  sense.  But  in  a  poetic, 
harmonic,  and  rather  excitedly  mystical  way  he 
is  harking  back  to  ancient  dogmas  of  proportion 
and  rhythm.  The  whole  of  La  Tourette  is 
designed  on  the  "Modulor"  scale,  Le  Corbusier's 
own  measuring  device,  which  is  based  on  the 
ancient  mathematical  proportion  known  as  the 
"Golden  Section."  The  Avhole  of  the  three-story 
window-wall  which  looks  down  the  valley  is 
designed  in  the  proportions  of  a  musical  com- 
position by  a  musician-engineer  colleague  of  Le 
Corbusier  named  Xenakis.  The  process  used 
is  called  "Metastasis"  by  Le  Corbusier,  who  en- 
joys nothing  better  than  a  quadrisyllable. 
Metastasis  is  a  jirocess  of  transformation  and  Le 
Corbusier  no  doubt  sees  this  wall  transformed 
from  a  number  of  sticks  and  sheets  of  glass  into 
a  fused  harmony:  One  thing. 

A  similar  ]jrocess  applied  to  a  more  work- 
aday building  and  stripjjed  of  much  of  Le 
Corbusier's  poetry  and   all  of  his  mysticism,   is 


seen  at  work  in  the  Alfred  Newton  Richan 
Medical  Research  Building  at  the  Universii; 
of  Pennsylvania  (Figure  16).  Its  architect,  Lou 
I.  Kahn,  made  no  attempt  at  a  suitcase.  Nor  di 
he  homogenize  all  the  elements  in  some  sort  ( 
architectural  blender.  Instead  he  divided  th 
bigger  elements  such  as  the  laboratory  areas  int 
convenient  functional  sizes.  This  way  they  wei 
more  in  scale  with  small  elements  such  as  th 
stair  towers  and  the  ventilation  and  plumbin 
ducts,  which  he  felt  compelled  to  expose  t 
public  view.  Finally,  he  achieved  not  a  con 
posed  blend  so  much  as  a  mixture  like  a  frui! 
salad  in  which  everything  of  relevance  to  th 
job  in  hand— but  nothing  more— could  still  b' 
seen  fragmented,  naked,  and  identifiable,  \\h\\ 
no  separate  thing  dominated  and  all  wer 
subordinated  to  the  total  thing.  Because  thi 
approach  offers  more  freedom  and  flexibilit) 
perhaps  it  also  offers  the  most  immediate  hopi 
to  the  future  of  the  monolithic  movement.  Bu 
still  it  is  an  intensely  intellectual  aj^proach  an( 
as  such  it  lacks  the  essence  of  all  the  mon 
exciting  suitcase  conceptions  since  the  Tower  o 
Babel:  the  visionar)'  Cjuality. 


THE     DREAM      AND     THE     USI 

N     A    pure    case    of    monolith  ism    the    exact 
solution  to  the  building  jiroblcm  is  discovered, 
not  by  any  kind  of  engineer  or  social  scientist, 


I 


BY     ROBIN     BOYD 


81 


not  even  by  a  clever  designer,  but  by  an  inspired 
dreamer,  instantaneously,  in  a  flash  when  the 
clouds  part  and  all  beauty  is  revealed  to  him. 
That  is  the  nature  of  a  grand  monolithic  con- 
cept; or,  rather,  that  is  the  desired  effect.  And 
a  vision  is  characteristically  a  single  complete 
thing,  not  a  lot  of  things  beautifidly  composed, 
nor  a  single  thing  intellectually  analyzed.  The 
architectural  translation  of  such  a  vision  also  will 
have  the  power  of  instantaneous  communication, 
and  if  the  message  received  in  a  flash  does  indeed 
appear  to  be  highly  appropriate  for  the  human 
problem  of  shelter  untler  consideration,  then  it 
can  be  judged  that  the  suitcase  is  likely  to  be 
good  architecture.  The  problem  of  the  visionary 
architect,  however,  is  not  to  seek  visions,  which 
are  easy  enough  to  cultivate,  but  to  train  him- 
self to  dismiss  irrelevant  visions. 

It  is  important  for  the  monolithic  movement 
to  have  hope— to  look  ahead  and  not  over  its 
shoulder,  to  remain  on  the  upgrade.  For  the 
indisputable,  definable  object  of  all  design  is 
co-ordination:     the    drawing    together   of   many 


related  parts  into  an  apparent  wholeness,  a 
singleness  of  purpose.  It  is  only  right  and 
proper  and  historically  correct  that  a  building 
should  have  a  recognizable  idea  riuining  all 
through  it.  And  it  is  exciting  and  stimulating 
when  the  idea  is  so  vivid  that  it  makes  an 
immediate,  imperative  image. 

But  the  key  question  in  judgment  remains: 
Is  the  strong,  vital  image  the  right  one  for 
the  task  in  hand?  Is  it  fimctionally  and  struc- 
turally logical?  Perhaps  only  those  in  the  know 
—the  professionals— can  answer  this;  but  there 
is  another  question  anyone  can  apply  to  all  these 
buildings.  Are  they  emotionally  satisfying  in 
ways  that  seem  appropriate  to  the  occupants 
and  their  duties  and  their  sense  of  delight?  For 
architecture  is  still  nothing  if  not  a  usefid  art 
and,  very  literally,  a  living  art— for  li\'ing,  that 
is,  in  1961— and  if  the  image  created  is  not  in 
accord  realistically  with  the  fragment  of  life 
being  sheltered,  architecture  might  as  well  give 
over  the  design  of  its  facades  and  foyers  to 
Madison  Avenue  and  be  done  Avith  it. 


JOSEPH     W.     MOl.lTOR 


Figure  16.  Medical  Research  Building,  University  of  Pennsylvania;  Louis  I.  Kahn,  architect 

Harper's  Magazine,  July  1961 


MIRIAM    BORGENICHT 


TEACHERS  COLLEGE: 

Aj\  EXTINCT  VOLCANO? 


Its  brightest  faculty  members  call  it  "a  damn 
sick  institution."  But  a  TC  degree  is  still  a  passport 
to  promotion  in  most  school  systems. 

Miriam  Borgenicht  has  written  many  magazine 
articles  and  three  suspense  novels  and  uill  start 
teaching  English  at  \ew  Rochelle  High  School  this 
fall.  She  is  the  wife  of  a  Neiv  York  attorney,  Milton 
Klein,  and  the  mother  of  five  children.  A  Barnard 
graduate,  she  enrolled  at  TC  in  February  1960, 
acquired  fifteen  points  toward  a  master's  degree  and 
some  unexpected  light  on  teacher  training.  This 
article  is  the  result. 

MOST  empires,  as  history  readers  know, 
have  a  way  of  putting  up  a  strong  front 
for  a  considerable  time  after  decay  has  begun. 
This  truism  conveniently  fits  the  empire  called 
Teachers  College,  which  presides  from  its  bastion 
on  the  Columbia  University  campus  in  New  York 
City  over  more  sectors  of  education  than  some 
observers  consider  quite  seemly. 

The  appearance  of  strength  is  in  every  way  im- 
pressive.   A  quarter  of  the  superintendents  who 


run  America's  big-city  school  systems  received 
graduate  training  at  Teachers  College,  which  is 
knoAvn  to  the  trade  as  TC.  Cinrently  it  is  school- 
ing their  successors,  plus  plenty  of  the  teachers 
and  principals  who  will  work  under  them.  Every 
autumn  six  thousand  students  wait  in  line  at  the 
registrar's  office.  Of  these  more  than  \.\\o  hun- 
dred—far more  than  at  any  other  school  of 
education— collect  the  footnotes  and  unassailable 
generalities  that  compose  a  doctorate  of  educa- 
tion thesis,  thenceforth  to  sign  themselves  Ed.D. 
In  TC  classrooms  150  professors  draw  blackboard 
diagrams  for  courses  like  "Intergroup  Develop- 
ment and  Organization"  and  "Education  as 
Facilitation  of  Change."  .\nd  an  immeasurable 
pile  of  dociunents  goes  out  across  the  country, 
carrying  the  Avord  that  is  first  discussed  at  in- 
ordinate length  in  a  conference  room  above 
Russell  Library. 

This  power  structure,  indeed,  appears  menac- 
ing as  well  as  unseemly  to  some  critics.  They 
blame  it  for  every  woe  of  American  parents,  from 
their  sixth-grader's  ignorance  about  the  rivers  of 


83 


South  America  to  the  rule  which  keeps  their 
charming  French-born  neighbor  from  teaching 
French  in  the  local  high  school. 

In  fact,  however,  both  the  complaints  and  the 
aura  of  power  are  relics  of  philosophies  that  were 
advanced,  and  attacked,  and  sometimes  even 
abandoned  thirty  or  forty  years  ago,  and  what 
might  be  more  justly  criticized  is  the  failure  to 
produce  new  concepts  in  the  past  twenty  years. 
The  six  thousand  students  now  at  TC  are  more 
likely  to  acquire  a  vague  sympathy  for  the  whole 
child  than  a  curriculum  that  will  interest  a 
whole  classroom.  To  anyone  who  has  taken  one 
education  course,  the  ground  covered  in  another 
Ed  course  looks  all  too  familiar.  And  the  articles 
by  and  about  TC  in  educational  journals  usually 
sound  defensive  because  someone  has  to  answer 
the  critics,  and  no  one  but  the  educators  seems 
to  volunteer  for  the  job. 

To  tune  in  properly  on  the  thin  voice  of 
Teachers  College  today  one  must  remember  the 
aggressive  chorus  of  its  lustier  years.  The  simple 
business  of  getting  started  was  no  mean  feat. 
From  1887,  when  its  doors  opened  to  fewer  than 
a  hundred  students,  it  grew  steadily  for  over  a 
generation.  Under  the  firm  ride  of  Dean  James 
Russell,  it  also  sold— to  the  nation  and  the  world 
—the  idea  that  teachers  ought  to  know  something. 
Subsequently,  state  bureaucracies  may  have  be- 
come somewhat  inflexibly  attached  to  compulsory 
education  courses.  However,  when  even  the 
stanchest  TC  hater  looks  at  the  alternatives— at 
such  wayward  phenomena  as  the  recommenda- 
tions of  school  boards,  pupils,  or  other  teachers 
—he  concedes  that  academic  training  of  some 
kind  is  the  most  reasonable  basis  for  hiring  or 
promoting  teachers.  No  one,  it  appears,  really 
wants  teachers  traveling  light;  intellectual  bag- 
gage is  very  much  in  order. 

MULTIPLICATION     VS.     MURALS 

FO  R  many  years  Teachers  College  provided 
much  of  this  baggage  in  the  form  of  ideas 
that,  for  easy  inspection,  may  be  stacked  under 
D  for  Dewey.  Around  1915  these  ideas  had  con- 
siderable carrying  power;  and  American  schools 
still  feel  the  impact  of  Dewey's  philosophy  (em- 
phasis on  education  as  active  instead  of  passive, 
and  on  learning  as  experimentation  instead  of 
imitation)  and  of  Thorndike's  psychology  (large- 
scale  achievement  and  intelligence  testing). 

TC  spoke  with  many  voices  in  those  days.  Pro- 
fessor Kilpatrick,  in  one  classroom,  might  argue 
that  learning  should  involve  purposeful  activity 
and  should  begin  with  a  problem   that  created 


interest  and  cle\cl()ped  iniiiati\e.  His  colleague, 
Professor  Kandel,  might  tleclare.  on  the  contrary, 
that  the  schools  should  jMcpaie  students  foi'  adult 
responsibilities  through  formal  training  in  read- 
ing, arithmetic,  and  the  like.  After  a  tortuous 
journe)  through  committees,  this  debate  emerged 
as  the  question  of  whether  fourth-graders  should 
work  on  midtiplication  or  on  a  mural  aliout  the 
Iroquois;  and  although,  in  the  'twenties,  a 
majority  of  the  TC  faculty  would  have  ra\ored 
the  mural,  on  this  question,  as  on  the  problem 
of  teacher  certification,  TC  long  ago  ceased  be- 
ing the  sole  arbiter.  Nonetheless  it  chc^\■ed  over 
the  old  ideas  in  a  ^vay  which  did  tliem  little 
good;  school  boards,  for  instance,  that  had  fol- 
lowed TC's  advice  to  invest  in  movable  desks 
were  likely  to  lose  their  enthusiasm  when  the 
same  source  was  still  making  vigorous  attacks  on 
stationary  ones  five  years  later.  The  progressive- 
education  movement  was  finished  off  l)y  AV^orld 
War  II  conservatism,  by  the  rise  in  social  agen- 
cies to  take  over  functions  that  progressives  had 
wanted  in  the  schools,  and  by  the  push  to  get 
into  college.  When  parents  start  worrying  about 
College  Boards  ^viiile  their  children  are  in  grade 
school,  an  hour  \vith  maps  takes  priority  over  a 
"creative"  visit  to  the  local  fire  house. 

The  TC  chorus  also  carried  far  during  the 
'thirties  when  concern  about  the  social  order 
accompanied  and  sometimes  superseded  concern 
about  the  child  it  might  raise.  From  the  hilltops 
of  progressive  education,  vistas  of  progressive 
politics  looked  agreeable  and  were  duly  charted. 
In  19.S4  a  ne^v  course  called  Education  200F  put 
compulsory  doses  of  sociology,  economics,  and 
political  science  into  every  apprentice  teacher's 
notebook.  There  are  many  variations  of  200F 
today,  and  if  its  content  is  not  entirely  new  to 
some  students,  they  may  find  solace  in  the  fact 
that  their  predecessors  broke  new  ground. 

TC's  serenade  to  the  new  social  order,  however, 
^vas  far  from  harmonious.  "Where  did  teachers 
stand  in  the  class  struggle?  Was  George  Counts 
correct  in  saying  tliat  teachers  should  formulate 
goals  for  society?  \Vhy  a  Teachers  Union?  Was 
Dean  William  Russell  (son  of  James)  throwing 
his  considerable  weight  against  left-\\'ingers?  Had 
Kilpatrick  been  fired  for  progressive  leanings  or 
was  he  due  for  retirement  anyhow?  Were  Com- 
munists taking  over  the  place?  \\'ere  reaction- 
aries taking  over  the  place?  Questions  like  these 
shook  facult)  meetings  (as  the\  shook  mosi  meet- 
ings in  the  'thirties),  made  fi  iends  and  enemies 
across  the  country,  and  earned  for  TC— Irom  a 
Nar  ]'())/<  Times  rejiorter- a  title  which  it  still 
clierislies:  one  big  luihappy  family. 


84 


TEACHERS  COLLEGE:  EXTINCT  VOLCANO? 


i 


Toilay,  no  one  would  be  likely  to  use  the  same 
sobriquet.  The  heated  old  debates  have  been  re- 
placed by  a  vague  malaise.  "We're  a  damn  sick 
institution,"  said  a  young  professor  recently. 
"Ten  more  years  like  this  and  we'll  be  out  of 
business,"  warned  a  colleague  down  the  hall, 
without  bothering  to  lower  his  voice  or  close  the 
door;  self-censure  does  not  rate  as  treason.  But 
the  bright  aiul  generally  young  men  who  hold 
such  views  are  a  small  minority  of  the  faculty  and 
(hey  aic  up  against  its  backbone:  the  masters  of 
education  jargon,  the  men  who  shot  their  bolt 
for  causes  in  the  'thirties,  the  assistants  who  took 
over  from  the  Countses  and  Kilpatricks  and 
carved  no  new  niches  for  themselves.  Harping 
on  the  theme  of  individual  personality,  they 
demonstrate  that  what  is  radical  for  one  age  can 
turn  sodden  in  another.  But  they  have  the 
strength  of  numbers. 

The  TC  administration  under  President  Hollis 
L.  Caswell  is  still  playing  the  old  games  like  de- 
partment reorganization  and  purpose  reappraisal, 
and  soon  it  may  be  too  late  to  do  anything  else. 
Ten  years  ago,  TC  could  bear  the  brunt  of  any- 
one's grii)es  against  the  public  schools  with 
stolidity  and  even  relish;  perhaps  it  was  indeed 
responsible  for  the  slow  readers  and  the  bum 
sj)ellers,  since  for  over  a  generation  it  had  sup- 
plied a  sizable  share  of  the  nation's  teachers  and 
curriculums.  Today  there  is  competition  even 
for  blame.  Training  for  teachers  is  now  oflered 
at  twelve  hundred  assorted  universities,  liberal- 
arts  colleges,  normal  schools,  and  teachers'  col- 
leges. The  cozy  rationale  for  TC's  existence,  in 
short,  is  disappearing  along  with  the  daring  ideas. 
"We  either  move  on  or  move  out,"  said  a  yoimg 
professor  the  other  day.  But  the  only  discernible 
movement  at  TC  is  toward  the  realignment  of 
courses  in  education. 

ONE     BOOK     PER     SEMESTER 

WH  E  R  E  in  fact  should  Teachers  College 
move?  Where  should  it  move  to  solve 
the  main  problem  today:  how  to  lure  bright  peo- 
ple into  teaching?  A  professional  school  can 
handle  a  shortage  in  two  opposite  ways.  One 
method  is  to  make  the  preparation  appear  so 
accessible  and  undemanding  that  anyone  may 
take  a  stab  at  it.  The  other  way  is  to  invest  it 
with  such  qualifications  and  difficulties  and,  con- 
sequently, glamour  that  only  the  superior  will 
feel  eligible.  TC  adopted  the  first  method  thirty 
years  ago;  with  few  modifications  it  still  prevails. 
How  does  it  work?  Let  us  take  a  look  at  a 
promising  young  college  graduate  named  John 


who,  after  a  year  in  his  father's  ladoiy,  dec  ides 
that  he  wants  to  become  a  high-school  English 
teacher.  He  enrolls  at  TC  and  finds  plenty  to 
choose  from.  He  can,  for  example,  lake  hi>  j)ick 
among  Psychology  of  Early  .\dolescence.  Psy- 
chology of  Late  Adolescence,  Psychology  of  the 
Adult,  Psychology  of  Adjustment,  Psychology  of 
Communication,  Psychology  of  Personalily.  Psy- 
chology of  School  Learniiig,  Psychology  of 
Family  Relations,  and  some  InuKhed  other  psy- 
chologies. But  amid  the  diversity  is  a  certain 
rigidity.  For  instance,  a  course  grandly  called 
"Communication  and  the  Comnumication  Arts 
in  the  Modern  Community"  is  a  ie(juisitc  for  his 
master's.  This  sounds  like  material  John  had 
studied  in  college  so  he  asks  if  lie  may  take  a  test 
to  exempt  him  (a  not  uncommon  jiractice  in 
many  schools).  The  answer  is  "no"  because  "the 
human  relationships  involved  in  a  course  are  as 
vital  as  the  subject  matter." 

Various  other  trials  are  in  store.  John  finds 
that  almost  every  class  accommodates  a  widely 
disparate  group:  the  physical  ed  major  from  a 
Southern  school  and  the  Ivy-League  graduate, 
the  nurse  on  scholarship  from  her  hospital  and 
the  experienced  teacher  out  for  advancement,  the 
housewife  back  after  fifteen  years  of  reading  re- 
cipes, and  the  foreign  student  whose  mastery  of 
English  is  not  quite  up  to  his  spirit.  Generally 
the  pace  is  geared  to  the  slow  student:  one  book 
—and  a  digest  at  that— may  be  a  whole  semester's 
reading  requirement. 

After  a  while,  John  gets  used  to  the  effortless 
stroke  which  enables  him  to  swim  along  with 
A's  and  B's.  He  is  puzzled,  however,  by  an  ex- 
periment on  page  100  of  his  psychology  textbook. 
It  shows  that  when  restaurant  waitresses  arc  con- 
fronted with  desserts  in  two  rows,  they  reach  on 
tiptoe  for  those  in  back;  the  implication  is  that 
people  go  after  what  is  hard  to  get.  But  at  TC, 
he  finds,  the  treats  are  within  easy  reach  of  all. 
John  hears  much  talk  about  areas  of  reference, 
societal  values,  and  the  purpose  of  education. 
The  question,  "what  is  education?",  is  good  for 
forty  minutes  at  the  start  of  any  course;  so  is 
something  known  as  "constructive  discussion  of 
significant  issues." 

In  his  second  term  John  starts  student  teach- 
ing. Under  TC's  loose  system  (which  is  com- 
mon to  many  schools  of  education)  this  means 
that  he  observes  real  classes  in  a  nearby  school 
for  several  months,  and  is  in  charge  of  them  for 
perhaps  an  equal  time.  An  accomjxmying 
seminar  at  TC  is  supposed  to  clarify  his  ojiinions 
and  answer  his  questions. 

John's   high-school    pupils   are   studying    The 


BY     MIRIAM     BORGENICHT 


85 


Scarlet  Letter.  He  would  like  help  on  the  follow- 
ing: What  sort  of  analysis  of  the  Puritan  mind 
should  properly  precede  a  reading  of  the  book? 
How  much  information  about  Hawthorne's  life 
should    be    expected?     How    does    Hawthorne's 
sense  of  sin  compare  with  our  modern  sense,  and 
to  what  extent  is  this  an  appropriate  topic  for  a 
bright   eleventh   grade?    What    analogous   book 
would  be  preferable  for  a  class  of  more  limited 
ability?    However,  a  fruitful  discussion  of  these 
problems  would  assume   a  knowledge   of   Haw- 
thorne, of  the  Puritan  mind,  of  Salem,  and  of 
eleventh-grade  reading  lists;   it  would  also  ex- 
clude those  without  this  knowledge.    But  exclu- 
sion is  not  the  liberal— that  is  to  say,  the  TC— 
way.    Instead  of  learning  about  high-school  cur- 
riculums,  John  finds  in  a  typical  seminar  that  he 
must    ponder   something   called    a    "sociagram," 
which  is  a  diagram  showing  how  students  in  a 
hypothetical    high-school    class    relate    to    each 
other.    Susan  (as  shown  by  arrows)  is  not  well 
liked  by  either  the  large  groups  dominated  by 
Ellen  and  Burt  or  the  small  one  led  by  Mary. 
To  scrutinize  this,  of  course,   requires   nothing 
but   a  general   empathy.    One  seminar   student 
identifies    with     Bint;     another     contributes    a 
poignant  speculation  about  Mary.   No  one  men- 
tions the  fact  that,  in  most  high  schools,  deans 
or  guidance  experts— for  better  or  worse— now  do 
the  counseling,  or  that,  indeed,  a  teacher  who  in- 
terfered   in    the    social    life    of    sixteen-year-olds 
would  be  a  dead  duck.    A  spirit  of  good  will 
pervades  the  seminar.    Everyone  has  an  opinion 
about  whether  Susan's  rejected  state  may  inter- 
fere with  her  performance  on  tests.    More  arrows 
are  drawn  to  delineate  high-school  cliques;  the 
student  teachers  obediently  copy  these  into  note- 
books.  John,  meanwhile,  finds  himself  thinking 
that  perhaps  he  wants  to  run  the  family  nut-and- 
bolt  factory  after  all. 

IS     IT     HARD     TO     GET     IN? 

WOULD  John  have  found  the  same  limp 
procedures  at  all  schools  of  education? 
Generally,  yes.  In  an  attempt  to  change  matters, 
the  Ford  Foundation  two  years  ago  gave  a  lordly 
$15,478,000  to  nineteen  graduate  teacher-training 
schools:  S2,800,000  went  to  Harvard;  $2,400,000 
to  the  University  of  Chicago;  $800,000  to  Cornell; 
$1,047,000  to  Brown;  $900,000  to  Stanford;  and 
$600,000  to  George  Peabody  College  in  Ten- 
nessee. These  are  very  different  institutions,  but 
they  are  in  accord  on  one  major  point:  that  for 
the  potential  teacher,  the  best  soft  sell  may  well 
be  a  year  of  hard  grind. 


To  accomplish  this,  they  have,  first,  tightened 
admission  standards;  as  a  result,  many  of  them 
now  have  more  applicants  than  they  can  handle 
for  the  M.A.  in  teaching.  Second,  they  have  es- 
tablished close  ties  with  nearby  school  systems. 
In  Los  Angeles,  for  instance,  the  city  schools  help 
screen  candidates  for  the  University  of  Southern 
California  School  of  Education  and  agree  to  hire 
them  after  training.  There  is  similar  rapport  at 
Central  Michigan  University,  Bucknell,  and 
Cornell. 

Pay  has  also  been  used  as  a  lure  for  student 
teachers,  who  are  sometimes  called  interns.  It 
varies  from  $1,750  paid  to  Harvard  students  by 
Newton  and  Lexington  public  schools,  to  $1,275 
(one-semester  substitute's  pay)  for  a  few  trainees 
at  George  Peabody.  University  of  Chicago  in- 
terns are  paid  in  proportion  to  the  amount  of 
teaching  they  do.  At  Stanford  the  classroom 
teacher  who  supervises  the  interns  pockets  an 
extra  check.  Diverse  as  they  arc,  these  devices 
all  add  to  the  attractiveness  of  teacher  training 
and  help  make  it  a  real  rather  than  a  textbook 
experience. 

As  a  natural  corollary,  lots  of  the  education 
textbooks  have  bitten  the  dust.  Stanford  cut  its 
methods  course  requirement  from  forty-two 
points  to  thirty-four.  At  Harvard's  School  of 
Education,  students  are  taking  more  than  ten 
times  as  many  courses  in  the  college  faculty  of 
arts  and  sciences  as  they  did  in  the  early  'fifties. 
In  fact,  according  to  Dean  Kcppel,  practically 
all  courses  are  now  in  subject  matter  rather  than 
in  methods.  A  decent  respect  has  thus  been 
fostered  between  the  university  and  the  school 
of  education;  liberal-arts  professors  look  a  lot 
more  tolerantly  on  the  education  student  once 
they  are  able  to  put  him  through  their  own  de- 
manding paces. 

At  Teachers  College,  however,  such  promising 
innovations  have  made  few  inroads.  Admissions 
policy  was  mildly  modified  last  spring,  wlien  a 
"B"  average  in  college  was  made  an  entrance 
requirement.  But  differences  in  colleges  and 
loopholes  for  "prior  field  experience"  still  allow 
great  latitude.  Though  Teachers  College  Dean 
John  Fischer  (a  former  Baltimore  School  Super- 
intendent who  was  appointed  last  year)  com- 
mends tight  standards,  he  also  takes  shelter  under 
the  TC  tradition  of  never  turning  away  anyone 
who  wants  help.  Isn't  it  a  fact,  he  asks,  that  for 
teaching  certain  groups,  the  fellow  who  just 
squeaked  through  a  small  Arkansas  college  may 
be  just  as  good  a  bet  as  a  cum  laitde  from  Am- 
herst? Tempering  any  inclination  to  put  up 
barriers  is  the  perverse  fact  that  TC  enrollment 


86 


TEACHERS  COLLEGE:  EXTINCT  VOLCANO? 


has  declined  anyhow -from  8,483  in  1959  to  7,829 
in  1960,  for  the  combined  spring  and  winter  ses- 
sions. (Summer  sessions  add  another  few  thou- 
sand.) Dr.  Fischer  hopefully  ascribes  this  slump 
to  the  low  birth  rate  in  the  'thirties,  but  other 
schools  are  not  so  afflicted. 

Thus  one  is  led  to  suspect  that  a  liberal  ad- 
missions policy  may  be  dictated  less  by  ideology 
than  by  poverty.  This  is  an  old  story  at  TC 
though  it  is  seldom  told;  an  institution  with 
empty  coffers,  like  a  girl  with  an  empty  date 
book,  suffers  from  unpopidarity.  TC's  finances 
are  complicated  by  all  manner  of  special  grants 
and  funds  for  assorted  research  and  publication 
projects.  However,  tuition  fees  supply  at  least 
three-quarters  of  the  "instructional"  budget  and 
in  consequence  almost  anyone  with  a  tuition 
check  in  hand  is  welcome.  Those  who  would  like 
TC  to  become  the  Harvard  of  education  must 
reckon  with  the  fact  that  it  lacks  Harvard's 
financial  cushion.  Nor  is  its  own  hard  seat  at  the 
bargaining  table  likely  to  be  eased.  Though 
some  endowment  money  trickles  in,  notably  from 
the  Carnegie  and  the  Kellogg  foundations,  grants 
are  usually  earmarked  for  special  purposes  such 
as  teacher  education  in  Africa.  This  spring,  to 
be  sure,  Procter  and  Gamble  gave  $15,000  with- 
out attached  strings,  but  this  rare  kind  of  unre- 
stricted largess  is  hardly  enough  to  buy  acous- 
tical tile  for  a  couple  of  reconditioned  classrooms. 
The  big  money  the  Ford  Foundation  gave  to 
nineteen  colleges  was  for  a  major  shake-up  in 
their  programs;  it  is  well  known  that  no  real 
shake-up  will  get  past  the  main  desk  at  TC. 

Short  of  money,  TC  is  also  hobbled  by  lack  of 
a  link  with  the  New  York  City  public  schools  or 
any  others.  This  was  not  always  the  case.  Over 
the  years,  TC  has  had  five  affiliated  demonstra- 
tion schools.  The  most  noteworthy  was  Lincoln, 
which  merged  with  Horace  Mann  in  1940  and 
was  closed  nine  years  later  because  it  was  felt  to 
have  outlived  its  usefulness.  Lincoln,  in  fact, 
was  demonstrating  that  progressive  methods  ap- 
plied by  first-rate  teachers  to  the  selected  children 
of  privileged  families  turn  out  a  superior  prod- 
uct, to  no  one's  surprise.  However,  there  grew 
to  be  less  and  less  connection  between  what  went 
on  at  Lincoln,  where  a  "slow  learner"  might 
have  an  IQ  of  110,  and  most  of  the  school  sys- 
tems (Denver  or  Kansas  City,  for  example)  that 
tried  to  benefit  from  it.  The  decision  to  close 
Lincoln  was  denounced  angrily,  in  and  out  of  the 
courts,  by  parents  and  onlookers.  But  by  and 
large  they  missed  the  point:  the  disaster  was  not 
that  Lincoln  folded  but  that  nothing  replaced  it. 
TC  today  has  no  campus  school   where  a  pro- 


fessor may  take  his  students,  or  his  ideas,  or  even 
himself.  No  channels— like  those  in  Cambridge 
or  California— have  been  opened  up  to  neighbor- 
ing classrooms.  Communication  is  a  big  word  in 
the  catalogue,  but  TC  has  no  working  variety  of 
it  with  school  superintendents  and  principals  in 
its  own  back  yard. 

Though  Dean  Fischer  urges  teachers  to  under- 
stand "the  great  diversity  of  pupils  across  the 
country,"  TC  courses  offer  few  glimpses  of  the 
Harlem  public  schools  five  blocks  away.  This 
remoteness  led  a  Brooklyn  teacher  to  comment 
sardonically  on  a  lecture  on  visual  aids.  "I'd  just 
like  to  see  that  professor  in  my  class,"  she  said. 
"The  boys  are  squirting  ink.  The  girls  are  busy 
with  the  old  make-up.  And  someone's  using  the 
kind  of  words  you  don't  find  in  the  manuals. 
What  would  he  do  about  it?" 

To  be  sure,  not  all  the  professors  are  happy  at 
their  alienated  blackboards.  "If  we  want  to  blaze 
new  trails  we  should  be  working  with  the  Puerto 
Rican  children,"  says  Professor  Lawrence  Cremin, 
who  heads  the  Social  and  Philosophical  Founda- 
tions Department.  "These  children  sit  at  a  third 
of  the  desks  in  New  York  City  schools.  Their 
language  and  behavior  problems  would  give  us 
plenty  to  hack  our  way  through."  Professor 
James  McClellan,  who  teaches  philosophy  with  a 
Texas  accent,  is  equally  driven  toward  public- 
school  teaching.  "I  despise  it,  I  hate  it,  but  I 
ought  to  be  doing  it.  I  need  someone  to  give  me 
a  push."  Acting  without  the  push  is  Professor 
George  Bereday,  who  teaches  social  studies  once 
a  week  in  a  nearby  suburban  junior  high  school. 

CASTING  IMITATION  PEARLS 

BY  A  N  D  large,  however,  TC  puts  its  main 
trust  in  the  methods  course.  This  category 
ranges,  roughly,  from  Philosophical  Foundations, 
which  may  consider  Rousseau,  Locke,  or  Dewey, 
or  Psychological  Foundations,  which  examines 
theories  of  learning,  to  the  methods  course 
proper,  which  tells  how  to  set  up  a  high-school 
physics  experiment.  "Philosophic"  and  "psy- 
chological" courses  are  often  criticized  as  being 
on  a  rather  simple  undergraduate  level.  But  it 
is  the  practical  methods  course  that  Jacques 
Barzun  had  in  mind  when  he  said  that  its  total 
substance  "could  be  given  in  fifteen  minutes  of 
casual  conversation  between  an  older  man  and  a 
younger,  both  interested  in  the  same  subject." 

Common  to  all  the  methods  courses  is  the 
stupefaction  engendered  by  familiarity.  Anyone 
who  has  taken  Psychology  of  Adjustment  may 
well  have  easy  sailing  in  Psychology  of  the  Adult. 


BY     MIRIAM     BORGENICHT  87 


Two  courses  which  deal  with  methods  of  teach- 
ing folk  songs  may  be  even  less  strenuous.  Mean- 
while the  arguments  go  on,  as  the  educators 
grope,  like  Pythagoras,  for  a  formula  that  will 
solve  everything.  Should  the  curriculum  be  40 
per  cent  method,  60  per  cent  subject?  ("Subject" 
is  a  course,  usually  at  Columbia,  in  which  one 
pursues  his  special  academic  interest  or  field  of 
subject  matter.)  How  about  65/45?  Suppose 
method  is  only  30  per  cent?  But  a  drastic  cut  in 
methods  courses  would  be  a  blow  to  professors 
who  are  not  equipped  to  teach  anything  else, 
and  on  this  front  they  maintain  an  understand- 
ably stern  vigil.  Though  Dean  Fischer  deplores 
courses  which  "needlessly  duplicate  each  other," 
he  simultaneously  reminds  students  how  lucky 
they  are  to  have  such  a  wide  choice.  The  hun- 
dreds of  methods  courses,  it  would  appear,  are 
in  the  catalogue  to  stay. 

Nor  does  TC's  odd  alliance  with  Columbia 
seem  headed  for  any  great  change.  Back  in  1915, 
some  people— notably  President  Nicholas  Murray 
Butler— wanted  TC  merged  with  Columbia. 
Others  thought  it  should  be  disassociated  com- 
pletely. Still  others— led  by  Dean  James  Russell 
—favored  a  "sovereign  state"  within  the  Univer- 
sity. Since  Russell  won,  TC  is  on  its  own 
financially;  students  pay  tuition  by  the  point 
system  and  TC  pockets  the  fees  from  its  own 
courses. 

In  contrast  to  this  straightforward  fiscal  rela- 
tionship is  the  uneasy  intellectual  one.  The  late 
Irwin  Edman  expressed  the  extreme  position 
when  he  called  TC  the  place  where  imitation 
pearls  are  cast  before  real  swine.  Today  his 
successors  are  less  vitriolic  and  though  many 
share  Barzun's  views,  there  are  signs  of  a  milder 
climate.  This  year,  for  instance,  Professors 
Bereday,  Cremin,  Hu,  Hunt,  Kershner,  Kimball, 
Watson,  and  Wayland  are  cross-listed  in  the 
University  catalogue,  a  sign  that  other  graduate 
schools  consider  their  courses  meaty  enough  to 
give  credit  for  them.  But  such  hands-across-the- 
street  gestures  are  rare.  From  Columbia,  the 
120th  Street  landscape  still  seems  dominated  by 
duplicative  courses  of  meager  content.  And  no 
TC  inhabitant  inspires  less  respect  at  the  Uni- 
versity than  the  Ed.D.  candidate.  Although  TC 
administrators  talk  bravely  about  the  Ed.D.  as 
"the  best  hope  for  new  ideas  and  serious  re- 
search," many  dissertations  remain  on  the  level 
of  "The  Care  and  Location  of  the  Pencil  Sharp- 
ener." The  demand  for  the  Ed.D.,  of  course, 
continues  high.  Teachers  need  degrees  to  be- 
come principals  or,  later,  superintendents. 
School  boards   feel   that  Ed.D.s   on   the   faculty 


prove  something  important.  Taxpayers  find  in 
them  a  reason  to  vote  for  bond  issues.  But  uni- 
versity faculties  are  less  impressed.  The  Ed.D. 
may  not  seem  to  them  like  much  of  an  academic 
trophy  until  it  entails  an  obstacle  course  at  least 
as  tough  as  the  one  they  set  up  for  a  Ph.D.  This 
is  not  likely  to  happen  soon.  President  Caswell 
keeps  on  promising  "re-examination  of  the  doc- 
toral program"  in  nearly  every  TC  report.  But 
there  is  no  real  commitment  to  change  anything. 

Commitments,  indeed,  are  in  short  order.  The 
frank  admission  followed  by  the  discreet  with- 
drawal is  the  habitual  stance.  "It  is  quite  pos- 
sible," Dean  Fischer  said  recently,  "that  we  shall 
have  to  distinguish  between  that  part  of  our 
effort  which  involves  service  to  all  who  need  our 
help  and  the  other  part  which  has  to  do  with 
preparing  the  most  qualified  leaders  for  the  most 
responsible  posts  in  education."  He  adds,  how- 
ever, that  TC  cannot  be  expected  to  sort  out  its 
sprawling  student  body  as  many  smaller  schools 
have  done.  The  excuse  is  unconvincing;  to  those 
who  scan  TC's  list  of  courses  in  techniques  of 
testing,  it  seems  ironic  that  some  of  these  can't 
be  applied  at  home. 

Perhaps  it  is  even  tragic.  For  all  the  gripes 
against  it,  TC  has  also  earned  respect  and  grati- 
tude. Over  a  long  period  it  backed  up  almost 
anyone  taking  a  bold  stand  in  education.  The 
educators  who  wanted  pictures  in  the  classrooms, 
or  who  tried  to  find  the  disturbed  child  early,  or 
who  inquired  why  children  learned  at  different 
speeds,  or  who  thought  math  teachers  should 
comprehend  the  League  of  Nations,  or  who  said 
youngsters  learned  more  if  they  were  happy,  or 
who  hired  a  school  psychologist— all  these  in- 
novators in  their  day  could  count  on  reinforce- 
ments from  TC. 

But  the  frontier  has  shifted,  and  despite  the 
many  different  ideas  about  how  to  run  schools 
and  pay  for  them,  everyone  is  agreed  that  today's 
crisis  concerns  our  desperate  need  for  superior 
teachers.  Everyone  is  also  worried  by  the  dour 
corollary— that  teachers  come  from  the  bottom  of 
the  academic  heap.  Faced  with  this  deadlock, 
TC— long  the  nation's  main  training  ground 
for  teachers— offers  no  inducements  compelling 
enough  to  attract  the  bright  graduates  of  Colum- 
bia or  any  other  college.  Unwilling  or  unpre- 
pared to  cut  its  losses,  TC  still  deals  out  bland 
liberality  that  was  good  enough  twenty  and  fifty 
years  ago.  The  loss  is  a  national  one.  American 
education  today  needs  plenty  of  powerhouses, 
and  it  is  good  news  to  no  one  when  the  oldest 
and  most  dependable  of  these  no  longer  seems 
able  to  get  up  steam. 

Harper's  Magazine,  July  1961 


PUBLIC  &:  PERSONAL 


WILLIAM   S.  WHITE 


Old  Junior's  Progress — From  Prep  School  to  Severance  Pay 


A  post-commencement  tribute  to  the 
Younger  Generation,  Male,  by  a  kindly 
but  fed-up  observer  of  the  Limp  Genera- 
tion .  .  . 


W  A  S  H  I  N  G  T  O  N-W  h  i  1  e  our 
young  graduates  are  still  atingle 
from  the  unearned  and  usually  non- 
sensical tributes  paid  to  them  by 
middle-aged  commencement  speak- 
ers, this  might  be  a  good  time  to 
tell  off  the  younger  generation,  male. 

In  kindly  and  avuncular  sunmiary, 
I  find  them  (on  the  whole)  a  dis- 
tressingly poor  lot— moderately  dis- 
pleasing at  the  best  and  positive 
stinkers  at  the  worst.  II  I  were  a 
newspaper  city  editor,  I  would  not 
willingly  hire  any  lellow  under  thirty 
without  a  searching  investigation.  If 
I  were  an  adviser  to  the  Peace  Corps, 
I  should  be  most  suspicious  of  those 
fresh-faced  lads  who  wish  to  go  off  to 
Kenya  awash  with  brotherhood. 

And  if  I  were  a  trustee  of  an  insti- 
tution of  higher  learning  I  would  try, 
against  all  the  odds,  to  put  some  guts 
into  its  faculty,  and  a  couple  of  ad- 
ditional courses  into  its  curriculum. 
One  of  these  would  be  instruction  in 
manners.  Another  would  be  some 
drill  in  what  used  to  be  common 
appreciation  for  one's  elders— not 
because  they  are  elders,  but  because 
they  are  now  being  forced  to  bear  an 
unconscionable    load    of    work    and 


responsibility.  Only  the  wealth  is 
being  shared  by  the  youngsters;  the 
burden  remains  exclusively  the  priv- 
ilege of  the  grownups. 

Let's  face  it,  the  kids  are  running 
hog-wild.  Much  has  gone  into  the 
development  of  this  correspondent's 
tired,  fed-up  malice  in  this  matter. 
For  a  starter,  here  is  an  episode 
which  illustrates  with  pristine  clarity 
some  of  the  things  that  are  Avrong 
with  American  youth,  male. 

Recently  I  received  a  letter  from  a 
"Mr."  So-and-so  who  briskly  de- 
manded my  aid— and  time— on  a  pro- 
ject for  his  course  in  journalism. 
(Unhappily,  the  most  unpleasing 
qualities  in  the  younger  generation 
seem  to  be  most  prevalent  among 
boys  and  girls  taking  either  journa- 
lism or  political  science).  My  cor- 
respondent required  me  to  answer 
twenty  questions  which  he  had  posed 
to  help  prepare  himself  for  his  chosen 
career  as  a  magazine  writer. 

No  man,  not  even  one  so  churlish 
as  I,  would  rightly  grumble  if  some 
of  his  queries  were  impossible  to  re- 
ply to— as  for  example:  "How  long 
does  it  take  to  get  to  the  top?"  But, 
I  submit,  the  mushiest  old  pater- 
familias would  find  his  temperature 
rising  as  this  letter  went  on. 

For  as  I  read,  it  began  to  be  borne 
in  uj)on  me  that  an  extraordinarily 
high  percentage  of  the  questions 
dealt,  not  with  writing  or  reporting 
techniques  or  other  points  of  pro- 
fessional   interest,    but    raiher    with 


matters  which  one  might  reasonably 
suppose  could  be  left  to  chance  and 
merit  and  to  a  considerably  later 
point  in  the  life  of  my  correspondent. 

"What  is  the  average  salary  of  a 
magazine  reporter?  And  at  the  he- 
ginning? 

"What  are  the  sick  benefits  and 
unemployment  benefits  in  this  pro- 
fession? 

"What  is  the  retirement  ase? 

"Is  this  profession  under  Social 
Security?" 

As  my  aging  eyes  fell  upon  this 
row  of  querulous  queries— hardly  full 
of  that  gallantry,  that  ardent  spirit  of 
youth-on-the-march— my  mind  went 
a  bit  blank.  I  looked  again  at  the 
accompanying  letter  in  the  belief 
that  those  eyes  had  tricked  me  and 
that  I  had  received  a  communication 
from  a  man  of  sixty-five  whose  ar- 
teries were  beginning  to  harden  and 
whose  spirit  was  reaching  out  for  the 
prospect  of  rest. 

But  no;  there  it  was.  The  letter 
was  from  a  boy  in  the  sophomore 
year  of  high  school. 
^  Now,  I  do  not  argue  that  this  is 
the  common  approach  to  life  of  to- 
day's younger  male  generation.  But 
I  do  say  that  it  is  far  more  nearly 
common  than  ordinary  logic  would 
suppose.  I  base  this  bleak  judgment 
not  upon  subjective  reason,  but  on 
actual  evidence  accumulated  over  the 
years.  As  a  syndicated  newspaper  : 
columnist,  as  well  as  a  columnist  for 
Harper's,  I  get  a  great  deal  of  mail, 
and  a  good  proportion  of  it  is  from 
the  young.  I  am,  moreover,  more 
than  usually  exposed  to  communica- 
tions from  students  of  journalism 
and  political  science. 

You  may  take  my  word  for  it  that 
these  inquiries  are  almost  invariably 
innocent  of  any  graciousness  of  tone 
I  often  have  the  feeling  that  I  am  | 
to  consider  myself  fortunate  to  have 
been  addressed  in  the  first  place;  that 
I  should  not  shilly-shally  about  re- 
plying; and  that  my  uninhibited  cor- 
respondent    would     not     think     of 
uttering   anything    warmer    than    al 
sour     treble-grunt     of     thanks.     He;,, 
would  never  be  caught  dead  saying; 
"Sir." 

Many  a  time  I  have  been  com 
manded  by  an  aspirant  for  one  de 
gree  or  another  to  put  aside  m^ 
trifling  personal  tasks  and,  in  effect 
to  write  his  thesis  for  him.  On( 
young  person   offering  me   this   op 


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jortunity  had  been  assigned  to  do  a 
paper  in  connection  with  the  Senate. 
He  observed  to  me,  in  passing,  that 
vvhile  he  understood  I  had  written  a 
pook  about  the  Senate,  he  did  not 
oropose  to  read  it:  I  would  under- 
>tand,  of  course,  that  he  was  busy. 
Moreover  he  already  knew  he  would 
lot  agree  with  the  book,  anyhow. 

THE     MOONING     ACE 

NEARLY  all  of  us  know  fathers 
md  mothers  who  are  trying  desper- 
itely  to  cope  with  this  sort  of  oaf: 
i^e  is  in  his  twenties,  at  an  age 
Allien  we  used  to  think  in  this  coun- 
ry  (as  most  people  in  Europe  still 
hink)  that  a  chap  was  a  man  if 
le  was  ever  going  to  be.  But  this 
ellow  remains  obdurately  a  most 
epellent  little  boy.  Though  long 
fince  eligible  to  shave  and  vote,  he 
nust  be  cosseted  endlessly  by  his 
h  iven  parents.  Except  for  him  and 
lis  boyish  demands,  they  would  by 
low  be  materially  solvent  and  spirit- 
lally  able  to  enjoy  those  small  re- 
vards  of  travel  and  relaxation  which 
hey  have  well  earned. 

This  fellow  is  a  common  type.  He 
pent  his  years  in  prep  school  or  high 
chool  mooning  about  in  that  drippy 
!vay  which  we  wrongly  tend  to  as- 
lociate  with  the  girls  of  his  age.  (In 
)lain  truth,  the  girls  are  a  different 
Old  a  happier  breed  altogether.  They 
lave  far  more  gumption  than  the 
nales,  more  manners  and  perspec- 
ive,  more  common  sense  and  self- 
Uscipline.  If,  as  many  people  think, 
ve  Americans  have  long  been  living 
inder  a  matriarchy,  one  thing  is 
ure:  the  present  younger  generation 
)f  the  American  male  will  not  redress 
he  balance.  It  well  may  be  that 
\  ithin  ten  or  fifteen  years  the  present 
lominance  of  the  female  in  adult 
ociety  will  be  seen  in  retrospect  as 
elatively  a  golden  age  of  manhood.) 

But  to  return  to  my  male  type- 
igure.  Having  some  time  ago 
imerged  from  prep  or  high  school 
n  incorrupted  ignorance,  he  has 
ince  put  in  years  of  a  dreary  aimless- 
less.  Somehow  or  another,  the  mili- 
ary had  him  for  a  while:  a  "trainee," 
eluctant  at  the  beginning  and  un- 
rained,  in  every  sense,  at  the  end. 
A^hen  this  Sad  Sack  period  of  am- 
biguous service  had  wound  to  its 
lull  close,  the  military  had  returned 
jiim,  with  relief,  to  his  parents— who 


persisted  in  being  doting  parents, 
there  being  not  much  else  to  do. 

They  went  about  frantically  try- 
ing to  get  him  into  some  college.  He 
had,  of  course,  held  out  for  Yale  or 
Harvard  or  Princeton,  or  some  other 
institution  high  in  cost  and  stand- 
ards. His  marks  did  not  remotely 
qualify  him  for  such  a  school;  nor 
did  his  true  interest,  or  what  the 
educators  call  his  "motivation."  Ac- 
tually he  had  pitched  his  desire  upon 
an  Ivy  League  college  (one  cannot 
say  his  "ambition,"  for  ambition  is 
one  of  the  many  things  which  he  has 
not  got)  because  he  thought  this 
would  be  a  smart  place  to  go  to, 
where  he  could  drive  about  in  his 
convertible  with  the  top  down. 

Now  this  sort  of  "motivation" 
would  not  be  vastly  amiss— in  a  boy. 
But  remember  that  this  hardy  adoles- 
cent is  past  twenty-one.  And  if  all 
goes  well  he  might  conceivably  be  in 
position  to  shift  for  himself  by  the 
time  he  is,  say,  thirty-three. 

HE     FINDS     BLISS 

WHEN  the  inevitable  happens  and 
all  the  big  colleges  say  No,  he  is 
shipped  off  to  some  cow  college  which 
will  open  its  doors  to  all  who  can 
read  (plus  a  lot  who  can't).  Then 
the  rather  pathetic  little  plot  begins 
to  thicken.  For  Old  Junior  suddenly 
decides  that  he  must  be  married,  per- 
haps because  the  television  ads  show- 
ing domestic  bliss  among  the  cleaning 
fluids  and  car-washing  materials  have 
put  him  into  a  strongly  romantic 
frame  of  mind. 

"Daddy"— this  will  remain  Old 
Junior's  term  for  his  father  long  after 
Old  Junior  himself  has  fathered 
several  entrants  to  the  family  line— is 
quietly  apoplectic.  Mother  (and, 
ultimate  horror,  she  in  many  cases 
is  still  "Mommy"  to  Old  Junior)  is 
aghast.  They  have  been  driven  to  the 
wall,  emotionally  and  financially,  by 
providing  simply  for  Old  Junior  him- 
self. Now  they  must  somehow  find 
the  money— and  the  moral  strength 
—to  launch  his  wedding,  complete 
to  the  flowers.  Of  course,  they 
ought  to  call  in  their  son  and  say: 

"Now  look  here,  Old  Junior, 
enough  is  enough,  and  in  this  in- 
stance there  has  been  too  much  al- 
ready. We  wish  you  well  as  our  child 
—though,  frankly,  we  could  wish,  too, 
that  you  had  not  insisted  on  remain- 


ing a  child  so  very  long.  But  this 
is  how  it  is.  Old  Junior.  Regretfully 
we  must  tell  you  to  go  to  hell.  If 
there  is  any  more  college  for  you, 
you  will  pay  for  it.  If  there  is  to  be 
a  marriage  for  you,  you  will  pay  for 
that,  too.  If  you  intend  to  found  a 
family  you  will  be  responsible  for 
and  pay  for  that  family,  too.  Old 
Junior,  this  is  where  you  get  off  the 
gravy  train;  or,  to  be  more  exact, 
this  is  where  you  descend  from  the 
lollipop  express.  Why  don't  you  go 
ahead  now  and  just  get  a  job  in  a 
filling  station?" 

But  Daddy  and  Mommy  will  not 
take  this  Spartan  course.  Instead, 
Daddy  will  grit  his  teeth  (which 
should  have  been  looked  after  long 
ago  but  were  not  because  Old  Junior 
was,  at  the  time,  in  the  Army  and 
required  a  weekly  check  to  supple- 
ment his  military  earnings).  He  will 
go  out  and  add  a  mortgage  to  the  two 
or  three  he  is  already  carrying. 
Mommy  will  again  pass  up  the  coat 
she  thought  she  might  be  able  at 
last  to  buy,  and  she  will  tear  up  the 
folders  about  Bermuda. 

So  they  will  usher  Old  Junior  into 
the  wedded  state  with  wistful  fan- 
fare—and their  troubles  will  begin 
to  multiply.  The  apartment  they  had 
found  for  Old  Junior  and  Mrs.  Old 
Junior  (and  one  must  pity  this  hap- 
less girl)  will  very  shortly  be  too 
small  or  otherwise  not  suitable.  A 
bigger  apartment— and  a  bigger  re- 
mittance to  Old  Junior— will  then 
follow. 

Whatever  Daddy  and  Mommy  do, 
however,  to  make  Old  Junior  com- 
fortable in  his  academic  pursuits,  it 
will  turn  out  to  have  been  too  little. 
Old  Junior's  growing  family  will  in- 
terfere with  his  intellectual  life,  and 
the  kindly  college  of  his  non-choice 
will  begin  to  murmur  that  even  its 
standards  Old  Junior  is  failing  to 
meet.  He  will  switch  from  a  major 
in  one  of  the  arcane  subjects  like 
history  to  a  major  in,  say,  the  man- 
agement of  hotel  barber  shops. 

But  however  Old  Junior  twists  and 
turns  and  works  and  works  at  his 
studies  (sometimes  two  or  three 
whole  hours  a  week),  he  will  in- 
creasingly need  help.  The  Dean  will 
join  Daddy  and  Mommy  in  his  line 
of  support;  and  other  hands  will  be 
enlisted.  At  length,  these  hands  will 
include  those  of  a  Marriage  Counse- 
lor,   summoned  to    help    Straighten 


How  to  achieve  a  youthful  body  and 
vibrant  health-without  tiring  exercises 

th  juM  ten  unittute^  a  4a^! 

LOOK  BETTER,  FEEL  BETTER 

By   Bess   M.   Meiisendieck,   M.D. 

Foreword  by  Paul  B.  Magnuson,  M.D., 
Chairman  of  the  President's  Committee  on  the  Health  Needs  of  the  Nation 

Gloria  Swanson,  Fredric  March,  Jascha  Heifetz,  Ingricl 
Bergman  and  many  other  notahles  have  benefited  from  and 
enthusiastically  endorse  The  World  Famous  Mensendieck  Sys- 
tem of  Functional  Movements.  Now,  you  too,  can  enjoy  the 
advantages  of  this  amazing,  natural  health  method — available 
for  the  first  time  in  simple,  popular  form.  In  your  own  home 
without  equipment,  you  can  banish  fatigue,  sparkle  with  new 
vitality,  and  add  new  grace  and  beauty  to  your  body.  AND 
you  can  accomplish  all  this  and  much,  much  more  in  only  10 
minutes  a  dav. 


Easy-to-follow  drawings  and 
instructions  show  you  how  .  .  . 

Step-by-step  functional  move- 
ments— scientifically  designed  to 
revitalize  specific  muscles  and 
joints — help  you  to  end  backaches 
.  .  .  flatten  the  abdomen  .  .  .  take 
inches  off  hips  and  waist  .  .  .  correct 
aching  feet  .  .  .  banish  double  chin 
.  .  .  tune  up  chest  muscles  .  .  .  re- 
lieve   fatigue    and    nervous    tension. 

Test  yourself  .  .  . 

A  revealing  self-test  permits  you 
to  discover  your  particular  weak- 
nesses— and  67  drawings  show  you 
how  to  overcome  them. 

Different  from  ordinary 
exercises  .  .  . 

The  Mensendieck  system  is 
wholly  different  from  ordinary  ex- 
ercises. The  exertion  and  perspira- 
tion required  in  "exercising"  are 
totally  absent.  Even  those  afflicted 
with  heart  ailment-  can  safely  bene- 
fit from  the  mild  gra<hiated  move- 
ments included  in  LOOK  BETTER, 
FEEL  BETTER.  Here  is  your  guide 
to  a  happy  life,  a  constant  sense  of 
well-being,  and  freedom  from  the 
laxness  imposed  by  modern-day  liv- 
ing. 


' — Ten   Days'   FREE  Examination  — 

HARPF.R  &  BROTHERS, 
51  East  33rd  St.,  New  York  16 

Gentlemen:  Please  send  me  LOOK  BFH- 
7HR,  FEEL  BETTER  for  ten  days'  free  ex- 
amination. Within  that  time  I  will  remit 
S3.f<5  plus  a  few  cents  mailini-  charyes.  or 
return  the  book  postpaid. 


Name 


Address 


..Zone.. 
:)sc  pa 
Same 


.State .<I0:Y 


City     

SAVE:    It    you   enclose   pavnicni.   we   will   pay   j 
mailing      charges.      Same       return      privdeuc. 


Which  of  these  chapters 
can  help  you? 

•  Comfort  for  the  Feet 

•  Reduce  the  Buttock  Area 

•  Flatten  the  Abdomen 

•  Strengthen  the  Bock 

•  Square  the  Shoulders 

•  Increase  Your  Breathing  Capacity 

•  Slenderize  the  Waistline 

•  End  Backache 

•  Reduce  the  Thighs  and  Abdomen 

•  Sculpture  the  Chest 

•  Abolish  Double  Chin 

•  Slenderize  the  Hips 

•  Sculpture  the  Upper  Back 

•  Strengthen  the  Ankles  and  Feet 

•  Mold  the  Arms 

•  Limber  the  Knee  Joints 

•  Shape  the  Legs 

•  Strengthen  the  Feet 

•  Combined  Movement  Schemes 

Enthusiastic  Praise  for 

the  Mensendieck    System 

"1  can  hf-artily  endorse  the  exercises  as 
having  worked  jireat  good  for  many  of 
my  patients."  From  the  foreword  by 
Paul  B,  Magnuson,  M.D. 

"The  (Jaims  .set  fortli  for  thi^  iujok  are 
so  uiiorlliodox  it  is  well  that  Dr.  Men- 
sendieek's  ideas  eoine  liighly  recoin- 
iiieniied  hy  .scientific  authority.  The  re- 
wanjs  for  llie  reader  seem  large  for  the 
minimal  fllorl  re((uired  l)\  Dr.  Mensen- 
(lirik  -  llicoriis  of  hodily  movement." 
— TEMIH)  MA<;A/LNE 

"Anyone  interested  in  reducing,  posture 
imtirovement  or  simidy  in<  rea-ed  grace 
and  agility  can  prolit  from  a  study  of 
this  volume."  KOCIIESTEH,  N.  Y. 
DE.MOrKAT.CIIHONICI-E 


i 


PUBLIC     &     PERSONAL 

Out  Old  Junior— although  Old  Jun- 
ior, characteristically,  will  think  thatj. 
this  lady  has  come  into  the  menage 
to  Straighten  Out  the  deplorable 
maladjustments  of  Mrs.  Old  Junior. 
Mrs.  Old  Junior  by  this  time  will 
begin  to  wonder  whether  it  is  all 
worthwhile.  And  sometiines,  right  in 
front  of  Old  Junior,  she  will  ex- 
change wordless  glances  of  quiet  | 
ineaning  with  Old  Junior's  Daddy" 
and  Mommy.  So  it  will  all  wind  up, 
of  course,  in  divorce.  Mrs.  Old  Junior 
will  go  to  work,  but  she  will  not  be 
able— because  she  has  had  no  train- 
ing—to take  care  alone  of  the  three 
or  four  children  magnanimously  left 
in  her  care  by  Old  Junior.  Daddy  and 
Mommy  will  come  forward  again— 
and  again. 


HE     WRITES     A    LETTER 

OLD  JUNIOR  himself  will  move 
into  the  fraternity  house,  an  enigma- 
tic elderly  figure  of  domestic  tragedy 
to  the  sophomores  there  in  residence; 
but  still  a  Little  Boy  to  himself.  He 
will  now  complete  his  intellectual 
training.  And  when  the  time  comes 
for  the  preparation  of  his  thesis  upon 
the  Management  of  Certain  Types 
of  Barber  Shops,  he  will  bestir  him-  \ 
self  mightily  and  find  the  name  and 
address  of  some  suitable  professional 
adviser.  His  eye  will  fall  upon  some 
unfortunate  Master  Barber;  and  he 
will  then  briskly  privilege  this  citizen 
with  orders  to  put  down  his  shears, 
lock  his  shoj)  doors,  and  "help"  Old 
Junior  to  write  the  thesis  which  will 
establish  his  bona  fides,  vindicate  his 
long  search  for  knowledge,  and  de- 
dare  him  at  last  to  be  a  Man.  And 
])()or  Old  Junior  will  say  to  himself 
—  just  as  he  is  telephoning  Daddy  to 
be  sure  to  make  hiin  an  appointment 
with  those  who  employ  masters  in 
I  he  an  of  the  management  of  barber 
shops— that  it  has  been  a  long  hard 
way  uj)  but  that  now,  by  God,  he  has 
made  it  at  last. 

Daddy  and  Mommy,  too,  can  now 
leel  some  sense  of  (|ualified  relaxa- 
tion—until the  day,  that  is,  when 
Old  Junior's  einj)loyer  incontinently 
and  ungenerously  hurls  him  out 
upon  the  public  streets.  His  cats  will 
be  lull  of  the  boss's  maledictions  but 
his  pocket  will  be  soothed  by  the 
boss's  (li((k  lor  severance  pay  and  a 
booklti  on  how  to  a|)ply  for  tuicm- 
ployment  compensation. 


I 


the  new 


BOOKS 


PAUL    PICKREL 


Summer  Fiction:    Steinbeck,  Silone, 
and  Some  Women  on  the  Loose 


RUNNING  through  all  of  John  Stein- 
beck's career  as  a  novelist  is  an  uneasy  and 
unresolved  debate  about  the  nature  of  man. 
In  some  of  his  hook^— Cannery  Row  and  Siveet 
Thursday  are  obvious  examples— he  sees  man  as 
essentially  a  biological  organism  like  another, 
innocently  helping  himself  to  whatever  he  needs 
to  make  life  bearable  and  enjoyable  without  re- 
gard to  the  rules  of  conduct  laid  down  by  society, 
which  is  portrayed  as  deserving  whatever  mulct- 
ing it  gets.  In  such  books  Steinbeck  is  the  sym- 
pathetic, amused,  but  largely  detached  observer, 
looking  upon  his  characters  with  a  benign,  for- 
giving smile  such  as  one  might  turn  upon  a 
bunch  of  puppies  playfully  chewing  up  a  shoe, 
as  long  as  the  shoe  belongs   to  somebody  else. 

But  alongside  the  biologist-observer  there  is 
another  Steinbeck  who  sees  man  as  a  moral 
being,  a  being  whose  actions  constitute  signifi- 
cant choices  between  right  and  wrong.  This 
Steinbeck  is  capable  of  indignation,  of  outrage, 
and  his  masterpiece  is  The  Grapes  of  Wrath. 

In  only  one  book,  the  story  of  a  strike  pub- 
lished twenty-five  years  ago,  In  Dubious  Battle, 
Steinbeck  arranged  a  confrontation  of  sorts  be- 
tween his  two  views  of  man;  one  of  the  main 
characters  in  that  book  is  a  passive  but  sym- 
pathetic observer  of  the  action,  a  young  doctor 
who  is  ready  to  help  the  sick  or  wounded  strikers 
with  his  professional  skill  but  who  otherwise 
refuses  to  participate;  the  other  is  an  activist, 
the  leader  of  the  strike,  a  man  convinced  that 
society  is  wrong  and  that  he  must  do  some- 
thing to  attempt  to  set  it  right.  The  debate  be- 
tween the  two  remains  inconclusive,  as  it  seems 
to  have  remained  in  Steinbeck's  own  mind, 
though  over  the  years  the  attitude  of  the  young 
doctor  has  tended  to  predominate. 

Steinbeck's  new  book.  The  Winter  of  Our 
Discontent  (Viking,  $4.50),  is  the  work  of  Stein- 
beck the  moralist.  The  main  character  is  a  man 
named  Ethan  Allen   Hawley,   a   veteran   of   the 


second  world  war  who  lives  in  an  old  seaport 
town  on  the  Long  Island  coast.  He  is  happily 
married  and  has  a  son  and  daughter  in  their 
early  teens;  his  family  had  once  been  rich  and 
influential  but  his  father  dissipated  most  of 
the  family  fortune  and  what  little  remained 
Hawley  himself  lost  in  an  unsuccessful  business 
venture  after  the  war,  and  now  he  works  as  a 
clerk  in  a  grocery  store.  Of  the  family's  past 
greatness  there  remain  only  a  fine  house  that 
Hawley  still  lives  in,  an  assortment  of  family 
mementos,  and  a  vague  community  awareness 
that  the  Hawleys  were  once  people  of  conse- 
quence in  the  town. 

At  the  outset  of  the  story,  Hawley  is  content 
enough  with  his  lot;  he  is  willing  to  go  without 
a  car  and  a  television  set  and  other  conveniences 
and  marks  of  status  because  he  enjoys  being  an 
honest  man  who  does  a  humble  job  conscien- 
tiously. But  all  around  him  he  sees  other  men 
cheating  and  lying  in  various  picayune,  semilegal, 
or  illegal  ways  to  get  ahead,  and  he  begins  to 
wonder  if  he  is  not  a  fool  to  refrain  from  doing 
the  same.  Then  when  a  local  banker  offers  him 
the  chance  to  come  in  on  a  real  estate  deal,  he 
decides  to  take  a  vacation  from  strict  morality 
long  enough  to  accumulate  a  stake  and  re-estab- 
lish his  family  fortunes.  Soon  he  is  up  to  his 
neck  in  a  series  of  shady  but  ingenious  schemes 
to  get  money  without  working  for  it,  and  the  plot 
is  made  up  of  the  working  out  of  these  schemes. 

In  the  end  Hawley  realizes  that  success  of 
the  sort  he  has  gone  after  carries  a  moral  price 
that  is  for  him  exorbitant.  This  realization  is 
borne  in  upon  him  largely  by  what  hapjjens  to 
his  own  son.  The  boy,  a  pure  opportunist  with 
none  of  his  father's  scruples,  has  won  :i  prize 
for  an  essay  on  "The  Spirit  of  America,"  and  as 
a  consequence  is  well  on  his  way  to  becoming 
a  television  star  when  it  is  discovered  that  he 
has  actually  cribbed  the  essay  from  the  speeches 
of  various  past  great  Americans  that  he  has 
found  among  the  family  books  in  the  attic. 

In  one  respect  Steinbeck's  morality  has  under- 


92 


THE     NEW     BOOKS 


gone  a  profound  change.  In  the  earlier  books 
that  he  wrote  as  a  novelist,  books  like  In  Dubious 
Battle  and  The  Grapes  of  U'ratli,  he  Avrote  as 
if  from  outside  society,  and  the  good  men  were 
men  fighting  for  change,  for  something  new. 
But  The  Winter  of  Our  Discontent  is  a  deeply 
conservative  book;  the  good  man  is  now  the 
preserver  of  the  best  in  an  inherited  tradition; 
his  task  is  to  hand  on  that  best  to  his  progeny. 
In  a  way  Steinbeck  the  passive  observer  of  life 
and  Steinbeck  the  moralist  have  merged,  be- 
cause the  moral  man  has  become  the  man  who 
is  aware  of  the  chicanery  and  double-dealing 
around  him  but  who  quietly  lives  his  own  hum- 
ble life  by  his  own  principles.  Such,  presum- 
al)ly,  is  the  true  "spirit  of  America." 

But  if  Steinbeck  has  at  least  partially  suc- 
ceeded in  merging  or  reconciling  his  two  views 
of  man  in  Tlie  Winter  of  Our  Discontent,  he 
has  not  succeeded  in  finding  the  right  style  to 
do  it  in.  The  book  has  the  tone  and  atmosphere 
of  lighthearted  suburban  domestic  comedy,  quite 
inappropriate  to  the  seriousness  of  the  theme 
or  of  some  of  the  events.  At  one  point,  for  in- 
stance, Hawley  plans  to  rob  a  bank  as  part  of  his 
vacation  from  morality,  but  the  whole  incident 
has  about  it  an  air  of  wild  improvisation  and 
improbability  that  keep  the  reader  from  taking 
it  seriously;  he  knows  as  he  reads  that  somehow 
our  hero  will  not  commit  the  robbery  as  surely 
as  he  knows  in  watching  an  old  Harold  Lloyd 
comedy  that  our  hero  will  not  fall  ofT  the  twen- 
tieth-story ledge.  And,  rather  typically,  the  situ- 
ation is  resolved  not  through  any  exploration 
of  the  morality  of  robbing  banks,  any  failure 
of  courage  or  triumph  of  nobility,  but  through 
the  all-too-pat  fairy-godmothcrish  arrival  of  an- 
other character. 

In  sum  the  novel  seems  too  often  to  be  an 
example  of  the  very  qualities  that  it  deplores. 
The  plot  is  so  full  of  clever  devices  and  ingenious 
tricks  that  the  moral  issues  become  lost  or  muted 
or  glossed  over;  the  situations  presented  ought 
to  lead  to  a  searching  of  the  soul  but  usually 
they  are  resolved  by  slick  contrivance.  Explicitly 
in  his  story  Steinbeck  has  pointed  a  moral  about 
the  spirit  of  America;  imj^licitly,  by  his  way  of 
telling  his  story,  he  has  peihaps  pointed  another. 

ACROSS     THE     BORDER 

THE  Italian  novelist  Igna/.io  Silone  is  also 
(oncerned  with  the  relation  between  private 
morality  and  society;  indeed  this  subject  has 
occupied  him  in  his  novels  niiuh  more  con- 
sistently than  it  has  Steinbeck,  in  his  new  book, 
The  Fox  and  the  C^amellias  (Haiper,  S.S..50), 
Silone's  main  character  is  a  middle-aged  Social- 
ist named  Daniele,  a  Swiss  who  li\cs  just  over 
the  bonier  from   Italy. 

Daniele  is  involved  in  a  pl(»l  against  the-  Italian 
goverrirnc:nt   (the  lime  (A  tlic   luutk  is  luvct  <  l(;irly 


indicated,  but  apparently  it  is  the  period  of  Mus- 
solini's dictatorship),  and  his  chief  accomplice  in 
the  plot  is  a  bold  and  sturdy  young  man  named 
Agostino,  who  not  only  shares  Daniele's  political 
ideas  but  hopes  to  become  a  member  of  his  family 
through  marriage  to  Daniele's  elder  daughter 
Silvia. 

But  the  Italian  government  is  aware  of  what  is 
going  on  so  near  its  border,  and  it  sends  an  agent 
into  Switzerland  to  uncover  the  plot.  This  agent 
attempts  to  work  through  an  old  seamstress  who 
because  of  her  work  goes  into  the  houses  of  the 
leading  citizens  of  the  comminiity  and  is  there- 
fore able  to  pick  up  gossip  about  what  is  afoot. 
She  is  also  particularly  vulnerable  to  intimida- 
tion because  she  is  in  fact  an  Italian  citizen  who 
can  be  deported  if  the  authorities  are  alerted  to 
her  status.  In  her  distress  at  the  role  of  spy  that  is 
being  forced  upon  her,  the  old  seamstress  turns 
to  Daniele  to  help  her  out,  and  he  alerts  his 
aide  and  supposed  future  son-in-law  Agostino 
to  keep  an  eye  on  the  Italian  agent,  with  the  re- 
sult that  Agostino  beats  up  the  agent  within  an 
inch  of  his  life. 

But  then  a  reversal  sets  in.  The  seriously  in- 
jured Italian  agent  takes  refuge  in  a  farmhouse, 
pretending  that  he  has  been  hurt  in  an  automo- 
bile accident,  and  the  farmhouse  happens  to  be 
Daniele's.  There,  in  her  father's  absence,  Silvia, 
the  betrothed  of  Agostino,  nurses  the  young 
Italian  back  to  life,  and  they  proceed  to  fall  in 
love  with  each  other.  It  is  not  until  he  is  ready 
to  leave  the  house  that  the  Italian  agent  goes  into 
Silvia's  father's  study  and  discovers  from  the 
books  and  documents  there  that  the  girl  he  loves 
is  the  daughter  of  the  leader  of  the  very  group 
of  plotters  that  he  has  come  to  S^\■itzerland  to 
destroy.  In  his  anguish  at  the  discovery  of  the 
conflict  between  his  personal  feelings  for  Silvia 
and  his  political  loyalty  to  the  regime  that  her 
father  opposes,  the  young  man  commits  suicide, 
and  the  book  ends. 

The  point  of  all  this  seems  to  be  that  in  any 
political  conflict  there  are  men  capable  of  a 
mixture  of  nobility  and  baseness  on  both  sides— 
in  using  his  great  strength  to  rough  up  the  Italian 
agent,  Agostino  is  doing  ^vhal  he  thinks  is  right, 
though  it  is  a  brutal  act;  in  his  horror  at  the 
conflict  bet^veen  his  jiersonal  and  public  loyal- 
ties, the  young  Italian  commits  suicide,  an  act 
both  desperate  and  brave.  The  symbolism  of 
Silone's  title  is  o|Kn  to  a  number  of  interpre- 
tations, but  the  fox  seems  to  represent  the 
public,  political  violence  and  division  that  link 
behind  and  constantly  threaten  the  Iragiant 
tenderness  of  jx-rsonal  relationships. 

On  the  whole.  The  Fox  and  the  Cainellias  is 
a  curiously  flat  little  stor\.  Probabh  the  Italian 
original  has  a  certain  amount  of  low-keyed  com- 
edy and  wannih  that  tend  to  be  lost  in  the 
somewhat  stilted  translation  of  peasant  speech. 
But   however  ih.il    may   be,   llie   book   falls  some- 


Suirimer  reading 

from\?king 


-^ 


A  SEVERED  HEAD 

by  Iris  Murdoch 

"A  tour  de  force.... There  can  be  few  novelists  on 
either  side  of  the  Atlantic  with  her  verbal  lucidity 
. . .  few,  if  any,  in  England  who  can  match  her  in  her 
chosen  field  of  describing  the  play  of  personal  rela- 
tionships with  such  a  sure  sense  of  the  congruous 
and  incongruous." 

— R.  A.  FRASER,  San  Francisco  Chronicle     $3.95 

A  BURNT- OUT  CASE 

by  Graham  Greene 

Nationwide  best-seiier!  "His  latest  and  greatest 

novel."— T/me.  "It  is  a  very  serious  book  and  a  very 

good  one;  it  is  often  outrageously  funny  as  well." 

— KATHERiNE  GAUSS  JACKSON,  Harper's     $3.95 

A  SHOOTING  STAR 

by  Wallace  Stegner 

His  big  new  novel!  The  story  of  a  California  doctor's 
rich  young  wife  whose  first  misstep  has  explosive 
consequences.  "Unusually  sensitive  and  perceptive, 
rich  in  drama,  humor  and  compassion." 

—Book  Buyer  s  Guide     $5.00 

THE  WINTER  OF 
OUR  DISCONTENT 

by  John  Steinbeck 

immediate  best-seller!  "The  finest  thing  John  Stein- 
beck has  written  since  The  Grapes  of  Wrath." 

—LEWIS  GANNETT       $4.50 

A  MONTH  OF  SUNDAYS 

by  Louis  Kronenberger 

"A  wonderful  prize  is  given  away  to  each  and  every 
reader,  viz.:  a  deliriously  funny  evening.... A  gem 
of  classic  farce,  a  brilliant  literary  feat— in  fact,  a 
godsend!"— DAWN  powell,  New  York  Post     $3,75 


FIND  THE  BOY 

by»W.  H.  Canaway 

"An  original,  fascinating,  and  beautifully  literate^ 
adventure  story. . , ,  Readers  in  search  of  first-rate  and 
sometimes  nerve-racking  entertainment  are  urged 
to  proceed  to  the  nearest  bookstore  for  a  copy." 
—DAN  wiCKENDEN,  N.  Y.  Herald  Tribune     $3.75 


CHINA  COURT 

by  Rumer  Godden 

Great  best-seller!  "An  entrancing  novel  by  one  of 
the  most  sensitive  and  original  of  contemporary 
writers. ...  Its  rewards  are  rich  and  many." 

—JOHN  MASON  BROWN, 

Book-of-the-Month  Club  News    $4.50 


THE  HUNTER 
DEEP  IN  SUMMER 

by  Edward  Loomis 

This  vividly  told  novel  has  the  mystery  and  court- 
room drama  of  a  murder  story.  But  what  begins 
as  a  brilliant  trial  lawyer's  crusade  for  social  justice 
turns  into  a  suspenseful  journey  of  self -disco  very. 

$3.75 

SATURDAY  TO  MONDAY 

by  Ruth  Rehmann 

"One  of  those  all-too-rare  books,  a  good  novel.... 
No  one  interested  in  the  modern  novel  should  be 
denied  the  opportunity  to  read  this  remarkable 
work."— L/^r«ry  Journal  $3,95 

ACROSTICKLERS 

by  Henry  Allen 

For  crossword  puzzle  alumni!  Crosswords  with  a 
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rHEWlKING    PRESS,  NevV«rk22,N.Y. 


94 

where  between  the  simplicity  of  a 
table  and  the  complexity  of  a  novel, 
without  quite  achieving  the  virtues 
of  either.  The  characters  are  so 
lightly  sketched  that  the  reader 
hardly  knows  them  well  enough  to 
(are  greatly  about  what  happens  to 
them;  the  plot  is  clumsy,  and  the 
j)oint  it  makes  is  scarcely  new. 

THE     HANDSOME 
ENGLISHMAN 

Jimmy  Riddle,  by  Ian  Brook  (Put- 
nam, S3. 95)  is  a  novel  about  con- 
temporary politics  that  approaches 
its  subject  with  remarkably  little 
ambiguity,  though  the  j^oint  of  view 
it  espouses  so  clearly  and  emphati- 
cally is  noAV  unpopular  and  will 
strike  many  readers  as  old-fashioned 
if  not  downright  reactionary. 

The  scene  is  an  African  kingdom 
called  Alabasa,  which  will  not  be 
found  on  any  map,  at  least  not  un- 
der that  name.  The  nominal  and  in 
many  ways  the  actual  rider  is  a 
hereditary  chieftain,  the  Balabasa  of 
Alabasa,  a  man  deeply  learned  in 
the  ancient  wisdom  of  his  people  and 
committed  to  their  ancestral  cults, 
\et  with  quite  enough  aw;ireness  of 
the  modern  world  to  be  deeply  con- 
cerned about  the  ^\ay  it  is  encroach- 
ing on  his  kingdom.  His  colleague  in 
rule  and  best  friend  is  the  local  Brit- 
ish District  Commissioner  (for  Ala- 
basa is  part  of  a  British  colony), 
jimmy  Riddle. 

Riddle  is  the  sort  of  colonial  ad- 
ministrator that  Kipling  would  have 
regarded  as  the  right  sort:  he  is  a 
gentleman,  with  a  gentleman's  abil- 
ity to  hold  his  liquor,  handle  his 
women,  speak  native  languages,  act 
with  dispatch  and  courage  and  im- 
agination in  any  situation,  and  rec- 
ognize in  the  Balabasa  another  gen- 
tleman with  whom  he  can  deal  man- 
to-man. 

Left  to  themselves,  the  Balabasa 
and  Jimmy  Riddle  between  them 
would  prejKire  the  Alabasians  for  the 
modern  world  in  tluir  own  slow 
but  safe  and  gentlcmaidy  way.  But 
they  are  not  kit  to  themselves,  l)e- 
cause  ranged  against  them  are  three 
powerful  enemies:  the  British  Resi- 
dent, \\\\()  li\(s  in  the  dislant  (ajjilal 
ol  tlic  (()\()]\\  and  li;is  no  (orKern 
lor  the  icsponsibiliiies  ol  his  posi- 
tion beyond  the  advaiKcmcm  ol  his 
own  career;  the  British  C>)lonial  Ol 


THE     NEW     BOOKS 

fice  in  far-oiT  London,  which  is  hag- 
ridden with  the  anticolonial  slogans 
of  ideological  M.P.'s  and  fear  of 
United  Nations  intervention;  and 
the  new  African  nationalist  leaders, 
portrayed  as  a  group  of  brash,  self- 
seeking  upstarts,  ignorant  sons  of  de- 
tribalized  slaves,  with  just  enough 
low  cunning  to  line  their  pockets 
with  foreign  aid  and  to  manipulate 
well-meaning  but  stupid  anticolo- 
nialists  to  their  own  advantage. 

It  is  unnecessary  to  trace  the  proc- 
ess by  which  Jimmy  Riddle  and  the 
Balabasa  defeat  their  enemies  and 
save  the  day  for  those  who  really 
understand  the  "white  chaps"  and 
the  "black  chaps"  of  the  right  sort, 
but  to  a  reader  who  knows  no  more 
about  Africa  than  what  he  reads  in 
the  daily  papers,  their  victory  is 
likely  to  appear  as  a  piece  of  senti- 
mental anachronism.  It  looks  as  if 
the  future  belongs  to  the  nationalist 
leaders,  whether  or  not  they  are  the 
kind  of  cheap  opportunists  that  they 
are  pictured  as  being  in  fit)) my  Rid- 
dle. The  book  advances  the  argu- 
ment for  the  white-man's-burden 
view  of  colonialism  ^vith  a  good  deal 
of  force  and  conviction,  and  much 
of  it  is  entertaining  reading,  but  it 
is  some  light  years  away  from  the 
quality  of  such  classic  novels  of  Brit- 
ish colonialism  as  Forster's  A  Pas- 
sage to  India  and  Orwell's  Burmese 
Days,  on  grounds  quite  apart  from 
the  point  of  view  it  espouses. 

NOVELS     ABOUT     ARTISTS 

A  NEW  novel  by  Jay  Williams, 
The  Forger  (Atheneum,  .?4.95),  is  an 
unpretentious  but  moderately  enter- 
taining story  about  a  group  of  young 
artists  in  Greenwich  \'illage.  Most 
of  them  live  in  a  kind  of  moral  and 
artistic  twilight  zone,  dependent  on 
the  whims  of  art  editors  for  the  com- 
mercial jobs  that  keej)  them  alive 
but  at  the  same  time  trying  to  man- 
ipulate dealers,  rich  patrons,  critics, 
and  foundation  grants  so  that  they 
can  find  the  leisure  to  do  the  kind 
of  independent  work  I  ha  I  really  in- 
terests tiiem. 

The  main  character  and  narrator 
of  The  Forger  is  a  young  man  named 
Rulus  Cirilfni,  a  Brooklyn  boy  who 
discovered  his  talent  caily  and  has 
alrc-ady  eslablishcd  a  small  i(|)uta- 
lion  lor  himsell,  though  he  now 
spends  most  ol  his  lime  turning  out 


Breakdown  (World,  ,14.95)  is  a  first 
novel  that  is  not  only  about  a  painter 
but  also  by  a  painter,  a  young  Eng- 
lishman named  John  Bratby,  best 
known  in  this  country  for  the  paint- 
ings he  did  for  the  motion  ])icture 
The  Horse's  Mouth.  Bratby  has  illus- 
trated Breakdown  with  a  good  many 
of  his  own  drawings,  all  of  them 
vigorously  rejiulsive. 

In  rough  outline  the  book  traces 
the  jjsychological  deterioration  of  a 
successful  artist  over  a  period  of 
years,  l)ui  in  fact  it  is  an  almost  in- 
describable hodgepodge.  There  are 
some  scenes  of  considerable  loice, 
but  their  effect  is  largely  destroyed 


lascivious  covers  for  paperbacks  and  { 
pursuing  assorted  young  women   ol 
his   acquaintance.    But   he   discovers 
that   he  has  a  certain   gift   for  inii 
tating   the  style   of  earlier   periods;  t 
at  first  he  uses  it  honestly  in  restor- 
ing damaged  works  of  art,  but  then 
the    possibility    of    outright    forgery 
presents  itself,  and  he  sees  the  way 
out   that  he,   like  all  his  friends,   is 
seeking— a    way    of   making   a    large 
amount  of  money  that  will  free  him  | 
from  further  hack  work  to  paint  as 
he  pleases.  | 

Alongside  Griffin's  development  as   < 
a   forger   in    art   runs   a    love   affair 
that  is  also  a  kind  of  forgery  in  per 
sonal    relations.    Griffin    contracts    a 
liaison  with  a  rich  girl  named  Adri- 
enne   who   is   living   the   life   of   an 
artist    though    in    fact    she    has    no 
talent.  At  bottom  Griffin  knows  that 
Adrienne  is  extremely  unstable  and 
not  to  be  trusted,  that  their  relation- 
ship has  a  shaky  present  and  no  fu- 
ture, but  he  keeps  himself  chained 
to  her  through  willful  self-deception    j 
as  to  her  true  nature,  though  in  the   I 
end,    predictably   enough,   he   is   re- 
claimed  from   both   his   artistic   and 
his  i^ersonal  lapses  into  fakery. 

The  most  interesting  parts  of  The 
Forger  are  those  that  deal  with  the 
technical  aspects  of  forgers— the  way  ■ 
new  paintings  are  artificially  aged, 
the  process  of  "authentication"  by 
experts,  the  methods  of  marketing 
fakes,  and  so  on.  Williams  seems 
to  be  well  informed  about  such  fas- 
cinating matters.  He  is  less  interested 
in  the  moral  and  aesthetic  problems 
raised  by  forgery,  and  a  good  deal 
of  his  book  is  filled  out  with  more 
or  less  standard  scenes  from  Bo- 
hemian life. 


I 


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Egypt  to  the  present  day. 
A  fascinating  study  of 
the  techniques  of  faking 
everything  from  Meissen 
porcelain  to  Van  Gogh 
oils;  of  the  methods  by 
which  these  frauds  were 
discovered;  and  of  the 
accomplished  forgers 
like  van  Meegeren  who 
have  duped  collectors, 
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96 


THE     NEW     BOOKS 


by  the  author's  intrusive  facctious- 
ness  and  stupid  commentary.  The 
depths  of  his  psychological  penetra- 
tion may  be  judged  by  such  a  pas- 
sage as  this:  ".  .  .  few  of  us  are  simple 
characters  when  the  veneers  are  re- 
moved, and  few  of  us  are  simple 
to  analyze,  the  underlying  causes  for 
our  actions  being  often  multiple 
and  contradictory"— an  insight  that 
will  hardly  be  ne^v  to  most  readers 
in  196J.  The  Avriting  is  frequently 
marred  by  stale  language;  things  haj)- 
pen  in  "the  wee  small  hours"  and 
have  "dire  consequences"  and  are 
otherwise  wrapped  up  in  cliches; 
yet  some  of  the  writing  is  forceful 
and  direct. 

But  the  most  annoying  aspect  of 
the  book  is  the  author's  way  of  in- 
terrupting the  development  of  the 
central  character's  decline  with  some 
facetious  remark  addressed  to  his 
"dear  reader"  or  abandoning  the 
central  character  altogether  in  fa- 
vor of  a  meandering  account  of  some- 
body extremely  peripheral  to  the 
main  story.  The  effect  of  the  whole 
thing  is  a  little  as  if  Laurence  Sterne 
had  tried  to  write  a  novel  based  on 
a  plot  by  Dostoevski. 

Breakdoiun  has  vitality  and  exu- 
berance and  imagination,  but  it  is 
undisciplined  and  often  silly. 

Clem  Anderson  b)  R.  V.  Cassill 
(Simon  &  Schuster,  .'^5.95)  has  as  its 
main  character  a  writer,  rather  than 
a  painter,  and  it  is  in  every  ^vay  a 
more  ambitious  book  than  either 
of  those  just  discussed. 

Clem  Anderson,  the  title-character, 
grows  up  in  a  small  Middle  Western 
town  in  the  dej^rcssion  years  and  has 
the  sexual  adventures  that  boys  in 
small  Middle  Western  towns  usually 
have,  at  least  in  novels.  Then  he 
goes  to  a  state  university  (it  sounds  a 
good  deal  like  the  University  of 
Iowa)  where  he  decides  that  he  wants 
to  be  a  writer  and  attracts  a  certain 
amount  of  attention  by  his  work, 
and  where  he  falls  in  love  with  a 
girl  named  Sheila.  After  service  in 
the  war  and  a  brief  period  in  a 
psychiatric  hospital,  he  and  Sheila 
go  to  Mexico,  where  he  writes  a  book 
of  poetry  and  starts  a  novel;  later 
they  move  on  to  Paris,  then  back  to 
New  York,  where  the  novel  is  pub 
lished  with  some  siufcss.  Cilem  iries 
to  write  for  the  tluaire;  his  marri 
age  to  Sheila  collajjses;  he  becomes 


more  and  more  alcoholic  and  dies  at 
about  the  age  of  forty  in  the  late 
1950s,  the  great  poem  he  planned  to 
write  ("Prometheus  Bound")  still  im- 
written.  In  a  sentence:  CUnn  Andcr- 
sou  is  a  study  of  the  waste  and  trag- 
edy of  romantic  genius  in  America. 

But  such  a  summary  presents  the 
barest  bones  of  a  novel  that  is  not 
only  very  long  (627  pages  of  small- 
ish type)  but  also  very  elaborately 
developed  in  every  dimension.  In- 
deed, Clem  Anderson  is  a  book  of 
which  the  reader  gets  the  impression 
that  the  author  has  put  into  it  every- 
thing he  has  thought  or  felt  or  read; 
that  it  represents  a  labor  so  vast, 
so  inclusive,  and  so  personal  that  to 
criticize  it  adversely  is  almost  in- 
humane. 

Yet  I  must  confess  that  for  my 
taste  the  book  is  badly  inflated. 
There  are  too  many  incidents,  too 
many  characters,  too  many  symbols, 
too  much  fine  writing.  Often  the 
excesses  of  language  are  almost  lu- 
dicrous, as  in  occasional  figures  of 
speech  ("we  never  knew  whose  cheek 
he  had  his  tongue  in  when  he  talked 
like  that")  or  in  longer  passages  like 
the  following  apostrophe  to  a  canoe 
on  a  college  lake: 

O  Canoe,  thou  perfect  Freudian  sym- 
bol, how  can  any  campus  be  complete 
without  thee?  You  vaginal  flotillas, 
bright-painted  as  an  array  of  lipsticks 
on  a  dime-store  counter,  on  what 
lakes  and  rivers  of  surrendered  time 
do  you  not  float,  frustrating  symbols 
of  fulfillment!  Already  in  thee,  and 
aching  pleasure  nigh,  our  duckfot 
[duckfoot?]  paddles  scraping  thy  sides 
like  juvenile  swans  scrambling  for 
purchase  on  the  Ledean  vessel!  Thou 
grounder  on  the  mudbanks  of  the 
Illisus,  what  poops  of  burnished  gold 
bore  more  fitly  Her  of  the  rain  pud- 
dles and  Midwestern  ponds  and  the 
morning  surf  on  Cyprian  beaches? 
Canoe,  qu'as-iu  fait  de  ma  jrunessr? 

That,  of  course,  is  meant  to  be 
funny,  and  perhaps  it  is,  but  there 
are  a  good  many  serious  passages 
that  can  come  close  to  matching  it 
for  fancy  literariness  of  allusion  and 
diction. 


T  II  i;     (;  L  O  ()  M     OF     T  FI  I.     IRISH 

The  Edge  of  Sadness  (Atlantic - 
Little,  Brown,  $5)  is  Kdwin  O'CJon- 
nor's  fusi  novel  since-  his  exiremely 
success!  ul     and     enleriaining     story 


about  Boston  politics.  The  Last 
Hurrah,  and  it  bears  a  rough  resem- 
blance to  the  j>revious  book  in  that 
it  presents  a  picture  of  an  earlier 
and  livelier  generation  of  Boston 
Irish  as  seen  through  the  eyes  of  a 
younger,   less   exuberant  man. 

The  chief  representative  of  the 
older  generation  in  this  book  is  not 
a  politician  as  in  The  Last  Hurrah 
but  a  businessman,  chiefly  an  oper- 
ator in  slum  real  estate,  a  wily,  witty, 
inexhaustibly  vivacious  and  tirelessly 
devious  old  man  named  Charlie  Car- 
mody.  O'Connor's  picture  of  old 
Carmody  is  a  brilliant  piece  of  char- 
acterization, though  Carmody  lacks 
the  fascination  of  the  old  politician 
in  The  Last  Hurrah  because  he  is 
essentially  a  static  figure,  tenaciouslv 
hanging  on  to  his  fortune  and  re- 
lentlessly bullying  his  middle-aged 
family,  but  not  engaged  in  any 
crucial  action  such  as  the  old  poli- 
tician's final  fight  for  office. 

As  a  consequence,  the  next  gener- 
ation, the  generation  of  old  Car- 
mody's  children,  tends  to  occupy  the 
center  of  interest  in  the  novel.  They 
are  the  characters  who  live  on  "the 
edge  of  sadness,"  unable  to  recapture 
the  high  spirits  of  their  father  Avho 
fought  his  way  up  from  the  slums 
to  become  a  man  of  wealth,  but 
equally  unable  to  free  themselves  of 
their  father's  psychological  domina- 
tion. 

The  most  interesting  member  of 
this  generation  of  the  Carmody  fam- 
ily is  the  son  who  became  a  priest, 
Father  John  Carmody,  who  is  now 
the  pastor  of  the  old  family  parish. 
Father  John  is  a  curiously  twisted, 
ingroAvn  man,  devout  in  his  religion 
but  hating  his  father  and  his  parish- 
ioners, consumed  with  loneliness  yet 
wanting  to  be  left  alone. 

The  story  is  told  by  another  priest. 
Father  Hugh  Kennedy,  whose  father 
had  been  an  acquaintance  if  hardly 
an  admirer  of  old  Charlie  Carmody, 
and  who  has  himself  been  a  life- 
long friend  of  all  the  Carmody  chil- 
dren and  a  fellow-seminarian  with 
Father  John.  Father  Kennedy  has 
not  had  an  easy  life;  after  an  ini- 
tially happy  jjericxl  in  the  priesthood 
he  slowly  drifted  into  alcoholism, 
until  his  bishoj)  had  to  send  him  to 
spend  Icjiir  years  in  a  sanitarium  for 
alcoholic  priests  in  Arizona.  At  the 
lime  of  tlie  story  Father  Kennedy 
has   been   rehabilitated,   but   he   has 


THREE  FINE  NOVELS 


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consequences.  Orvu^le  Prescott 
calls  M  iss  Grau, "  A  born  writer." 
Designed  by  George  Salter. 

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N 


THE     NEW     BOOKS 

returned  to  work  as  the  pastor  of 
deteriorating  church  in  a  criunbli 
parish,  like  Father  John  Carmoi 
a  lonely,  middle-aged  celibate  o 
of  touch  with  the  lives  of  his  p: 
rishioners,  withdrawn  and  perfum 
tory  in  the  performance  of  his  dutiei 

The   best   parts   of    The  Edge 
Sadyiess  are  those  dealing  with   thi 
priestly    life.    Rarely    in    America 
fiction    is    the    Catholic    priest    pr 
sented  as  a  human  being  coping  wit 
human    problems   of   ambition   am 
money  and  loneliness  like  anybod 
else  (the  short  stories  of  J.  F.  Powers^ 
are     an     obvious     exception),     but 
O'Connor  has  succeeded  in  portray-| 
ing  priests  as  men,  without  any  trao 
of  anticlericalism  or  satire. 

The  Edge  of  Sadness  lacks  the  nar- 
rative poAver  of  The  Last  Hurrah 
though  it  has  its  comic  passages,  it  ii 
«  cjuieter,  more  somber  book.  B 
within  its  modest  limits  it  is  a  sue 
cesslul  and  mo\'ing  picture  of  cer- 
tain aspects  of  .American  life  that 
have  rarely  been  explored  in  fiction,  i 
(A  Book-of-the-Month  Club  selec- 
tion.) ' 

I 

WOMEN     ON     THE     LOOSE 

BOTH  A  Shooting  Star  by  Wal-i 
lace  Stegner  (Viking,  S5)  and  The 
House  on  Coliseum  Street  by  Shirley 
Ann  Grau  (Knopf,  $3.50)  are  stories) 
about  women  who  have  lost  their 
moorings  and  find  themselves  adrift* 
on  the  uncertain  currents  of  un- 
familiar feelings,  though  the  two 
books  otherwise  bear  no  resemblance 
to  one  another. 

Miss  Grau's  central  character  in 
The  House  on  Coliseum  Street  is  a 
young  woman  named  Joan  Mitchell. 
Joan  has  been  left  a  considerable 
amount  of  money  by  her  father,  the 
first  of  her  mother's  numerous  hus- 
bands, and  she  lives  with  her  mother 
and  assorted  half-sisters  in  a  large, 
comfortable  old  house  in  New  Or- 
leans. It  is  a  fairly  amiable,  rather 
directionless  existence— Joan  takes 
some  courses  at  the  local  university 
to  help  fill  up  her  days,  she  has  an 
oll-and-on  affair  with  a  young  man 
who  fails  lo  interest  her  greatly  but 
\vho  will  presumably  marry  her  in 
time,  she  carries  on  sporadic  domes- 
tic scjuabbles  with  her  mother  and 
her  somewhat  more  attractive 
younger  half-sister  Doris.  Then  sud- 
denly Joan   i;;  deeply  involved  \\'\\\\ 


yi^ 


THE     NEW     BOOKS 

ia  young  instructor  :it  the  university 
(who  has  earlier  been  one  of  Doris's 
admirers,  but  the  reh^tionshijj  fails 
to  last,  and  when  tlie  young  man 
idrifts  back  to  Doris,  Joan  sets  out 
to  destroy  him,  witn  success. 

The  novel  is  admirably  written, 
tense  and  understated.  It  seems  to 
portray  a  kind  of  post-moral  world 
su(h  as  a  reader  encounters  in  the 
books  of  certain  younger  French 
^\■riters— a  Avorld  in  which  right  and 
Avjong  have  little  )elevancc  to  what 
tlie  characters  expect  of  themselves 
and  of  eadi  other.  I  confess  that  it 
is  difficult  for  me  to  take  any  con- 
sinning  interest  in  characters  of  this 
sort,  but  I  can  admire  the  economy 
and  skill  with  which  Miss  Grau 
has  told  her  story. 

IN  A  Shooting  Star  Stegner  has 
written  a  much  longer  and  more 
fully  developed  novel.  His  heroine 
is  a  woman  named  Sabrina  Castro, 
brought  up  in  the  strict  traditions 
of  a  wealthy  Boston  family  trans- 
planted to  California  and  married 
for  about  a  dozen  years  to  a  cold- 
blooded but  successful  society  direc- 
tor. On  a  vacation  in  Mexico,  very 
much  to  her  own  surprise,  Sabrina 
enters  into  an  adulterous  relationship 
with  a  dealer  in  textiles.  For  her  it 
is  a  revelation;  she  decides  that  she 
is  deeply  in  love  and  cannot  return 
to  her  husband.  But  her  lover  is 
a  good  deal  more  circumspect  about 
the  whole  thing;  when  it  becomes 
apparent  that  he  has  no  intention 
of  sacrificing  his  business  and  family 
to  their  affair,  Sabrina  completes  the 
job  of  cutting  loose  from  the  moral 
standards  that  have  previously 
guided  her  life,  and  becomes  a  sort 
of  society  tramp. 

In  the  end,  of  course,  Sabrina  gets 
herseif  straightened  out,  chiefly 
through  coming  to  know  her  old 
Boston-bred  mother,  not  as  the 
dragon  of  propriety  she  has  always 
seemed  but  as  another  woman  who 
has  also  suffered  and  learned  to  bear 
her  deprivations  and  indignities  as 
Sabrina  must. 

A  Shooting  Star  is  the  work  of 
a  highly  competent  craftsman.  The 
characters  are  skillfully  drawn  and 
the  story  well  constructed.  If  it  never 
rises  much  above  the  level  of  care- 
ful, conscientious  workmanship,  it 
never  falls  very  much  bclo\\-  it  cither. 
(A  Literary  Guild  Selection.) 


BOOKS 


in  brief 


KATHERINE   GAUSS  JACKSON 

FICTION 

There  are  two  recently  published 
books  whose  chief  purpose,  happily 
for  everybody,  is  to  amuse,  and  to 
which  it  would  be  a  disservice  to  re- 
view the  plot,  even  if  one  could.  One 
is  Louis  Kronenberger's  witty  A 
Month  of  Sundays,  and  the  other 
The  Adventures  of  Maud  Noakes, 
edited  by  Alan  Neame. 

A  Month  of  Sundays,  by  Louis  Kron- 
enbcrger. 

This  is  a  modern  Mad  Hatter's 
Tea  Party  where  today's  most  hor- 
rendous social  foibles  are  made  to 
appear  as  outrageously  absurd  as 
they  are.  The  scenes  are  acted  out  by 
a  cast  whom  Mr.  Kronenberger  sets 
in  a  luxury  institution  called  "Se- 
renity House"  and  directs  with  de- 
licious dialogue  and  deft  but  never 
heartless  satire,  through  mock-human 
rituals. 

Viking,  $3.50 

The  Adventures  of   Maud  Noakes, 

edited  by  Alan  Neame. 

Maud  Noakes  was  the  daughter  of 
an  Englishwoman  who  worked  ener- 
getically, when  Maud  was  young,  for 
the  Anglican  Society  for  the  Propaga- 
tion of  Christian  Knowledge— par- 
ticularly among  Africans.  But  Maud 
at  any  early  age  noticed  that  in  spite 
of  all  the  talk  of  being  kind  to  the 
"black  brothers  and  sisters"  in  Africa, 
her  mother  would  move  if  she  found 
herself  sitting  next  to  one  on  a  tram. 
This  led  her  into  strange  cogitations 
and  stranger  doings  as  she  herself 
goes  to  Africa  (and  then  pretty  well 
all  over  Europe  and  East  Asia)  on  a 
quite  different  kind  of  personal  mis- 
sionary venture.  Any  book  which 
has  been  heralded  as  comparable  to 
"the  best  comic  writing  of  Ronald 
Firbank  and  Evelyn  Waugh"  starts 
off  under  considerable  handicap  but 
unquestionably  this  Maud,  this 
exotic  and  sexy  "latter-day  female 
Candide,"  will  have  her  followers. 
New  Directions,  $3.75 

All     the     Summer     Days,     by     Ned 

Calmer. 

Those  summer  days  in  Paris  in  the 
1920s  were  the  ones  in  which  Lind 
bergh  flew  the  Atlantic;  the  final  ap- 


A  wonderful 
treasury  of 

Jerome 
Weidman's 

65  best 
stories 

MY  FATHER 

SITS  IN  THE 

DARK 


Here  are  stories  about  people  from 
New  York  tenements  and  Mediter- 
ranean villas,  wised-up  kids  and 
gentle  old  men,  the  shiny  nouveaux 
riches  and  the  shabby  old-fash- 
ioned poor.  Some  are  heels,  some 
are  heroes,  but  you  will  remember 
them  all  long  after  you  put  this 
book  down.  $5.95,  now  at  your 
bookstore    f^    RANDOM  HOUSE 


A  superb 

biographical  novel 

about  one  of  the 

greatest  painters 

who  ever  lived 


By  GLADY$»  i^ClOUTT 

Author  of  David  the  King 

Here  is  the  heart,  the  mind,  and 
the  times  of  a  genius,  his  passion 
and  compassion,  liis  enonnous  zest 
for  living.  Truly  a  work  of  art. 
$5.95,  now  at  your  bookstore 


HOUSE 


Reprints  Available 


Because  of  the  unusual  demand 
for  "The  Coininja;  Rust  in  the  Real 
Estate  IJooni"— the  lead  article  in 
Harper's  June  issue— reprints  have 
Ijeen  made  available.  1  hey  may 
he  purchased  for  10  cents  each 
from : 

Department   G,   Harper's  Magazine 
49  East  33rd  St. 
New  York  16,  N.Y. 


ANDRE  MAUROIS' 

spellbinding  portrait 
of  Adriennc,  the  wife  of 
La  Fayette  .  .  .  one  of 
the  most  appealing 
heroines  in  history 

Based  on  letters  and  documents  forgotten 
for  a  century  in  a  French  chateau 


Illustrated.  $7.95.  ■    McGRAW-HILL 


OUT-OF-PRINT  "^?,"fInd     books 


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BOOKS     IN     BRIEF 


peal  of  Sacco  and  Van/etti  was 
turned  down  and  they  were  executed; 
Mussolini  and  Hitler  were  building 
up  their  power;  the  Babe  had  already 
reached  the  height  ot  his;  Gertrude 
Stein,  Hemingway,  and  Isadora  Dun- 
can were  familiar  figures  on  the 
boulevards;  "The  Big  Parade"  Avas 
the  talked-of  movie.  But  to  the  ex- 
patriate young  Americans  on  the 
siafi  ol  the  Paris  Atnericdii  this  a*' is 
;ill  merely  background.  Foreground 
WA^  the  search  lor  their  own  personal 
pleasure  or  salvation.  The  atmos- 
phere of  Paris  in  the  spring  is  wo  i- 
derfully  recreated;  it  is  almost  pal- 
pable. If  there  seem  sometimes  too 
many  characters  to  keep  straight  even 
with  the  help  of  the  chart  provided, 
some  of  them  on  the  other  hand  are 
unforgettably  sharp.  If  the  parties 
seem  to  go  on  too  long  and  run  into 
each  other,  and  the  sAvift  exchanges 
of  sexual  partners— including  the 
final  switch— are  a  little  hard  to  take, 
perhaps  that  is  the  way  it  Avas. 

The  novel  is  a  nostalgic  reminder 
of  a  generation  that  thought  itself 
happily  lost  in  a  magic  city  far  from 
home,  turning  its  back  on  respon- 
sibility and  the  outside  Avorld.  The 
contemporary  Italian  movie,  "La 
Dolce  Vita,"  about  an  Italian  neAvs- 
paperman  and  his  friends  makes  the 
excesses  of  these  summer  days  look 
like  child's  play  but  one  has  the  sense 
that  the  author  of  this  book  believes 
—and  hopes— that  for  young  Ameri- 
cans at  least,  the  days  of  political  de- 
tachment are  finished  except,  as  here, 
in  vital  and  nostalgic  memory. 

Little,  BroAvn,  S4.50 

The  Dark  and  the  Light,  by  Elio 
Vittorini.  Translated  by  Frances 
Keene. 

In  this  book  the  author  of  The 
R(ul  Carnation  and  The  Elephant 
includes  tAvo  Avonderfully  contrast- 
ing novellas,  "Erica"  and  "La  Gari- 
baldina."  "Erica"  is  a  most  ex- 
(juisitely  restrained  and  tautly  writ- 
ten story  of  a  fourteen-year-old  girl 
abandoned  by  her  parents,  and  her 
efforts  to  feed  and  take  care  of  her 
\oiinfj;er  brother  and  sister  in  a 
poverty-ridden  slum  outside  a  city  in 
lion  hern  Italy.  I  have  never  read  a 
siinjjler  and  more  (juietly  moving 
siory— explicitly  of  the  instinctive 
pride  of  a  child,  implicitly  of  the 
nature  of  all  thai  is  good  in  human 
|>i  ide  at  any  age. 


;o 


The  other  is  a  much  more  flam 
boyant  though  no  less  discerning 
story  of  a  Avonderful,  funny,  andljiosi 
aAvful  old  Avoman,  once  a  camp  fol 
loAver  of  Garibaldi's  army,  and  a 
young  soldier  she  picks  up  on  a  train,  ng 
Magnificent  bravura.  >ral 

NeAv  Directions,  $3.75  [ion 

niii 

NON-FICTION  fof' 


Slai 


If  our  new  head  of  ICA  (Interna- 
tional Co-operation  Administration) 
has  any  doubts  about  hoAV  to  over- 
haul his  department,  it  isn't  for  lack 
of  criticism  or  because  he  hasn't  had 
all  iis  previous  errors  carefully  and! 
vehemently  pointed  out  to  him.  Two 
angry  books  have  been  published  in 
recent  Aveeks. 

A  Nation  of  Sheep,  by  William  J. 
Lederer. 

One  of  the  coauthors  of  The  Ugly 
American  here  writes  a  reportorial 
criticism  of  our  foreign-aid  policies 
based  on  his  oAvn  experiences— six 
years  as  special  assistant  to  the  com- 
mander of  all  U.  S.  forces  in  the 
Pacific  and  tAventy-six  "extended" 
trips  to  all  the*  Asiatic-Pacific  world. 
His  book  concentrates  on  truly  hair- 
raising  accounts  of  our  mistakes  and 
misinformation  in  Laos,  Thailand, 
Formosa,  Korea;  of  "The  Boomerang 
in  the  Foreign  Student  Program"; 
and  he  sums  up  his  general  indigna- 
tion in  a  revealing  chapter  called 
"Government  by  Misinformation." 
He  is  not  Avithout  hope  if  Ave  Avill 
stop  being  "a  nation  of  sheep"  and 
by  every  means  at  our  disposal- 
classes  on  foreign  affairs,  careful 
reading  of  good  ncAvspajjers,  letters, 
and  questions  to  Congressmen,  the 
President,  and  other  responsible 
government  officials— keep  ourselves 
informed  of  Avhat  actually  is  happen- 
ing. He  makes  it  very  clear  that  it's 
up  to  us.  His  oAvn  book  Avould  be 
more  helpful  if  it  included  even  the 
simplest  of  maps  of  these  troubled 
areas,  but  it  is  a  mine  of  revealing 
documentation  even  Avithout. 

Norton,  $3.75 

Foreign    Aid:    Our    Tragic    Experi- 
ment, by  Thomas  S.  Loeber. 

Mr.  Loel)er  has  worked  as  a  ma- 
laiia  specialist  since  1950  in  ICA  in 
Indonesia— in  Sumatra,  Java,  liali, 
parts  of  the  Lesser  Sunda  and  Spice 
Islands,  and  Celebes.    Later  he  Aveni 


i 


BOOKS     IN     BRIEF 


io  Jordan,  where  he  worked  until 
^960.  His  stories,  therefore,  are  of 
hose  regions,  and  shocking  they 
)ften  are,  though  he,  unlike  Mr. 
^ederer,  occasionally  has  an  inspir- 
ng  incident  to  report.  But  the  gen- 
•ral  pattern  is  frighteningly  repeti- 
ious.  In  his  view  we  made  a  grievous 
nistake  when  the  administration  of 
oreign  aid  was  taken  over  by  the 
itate  Department: 

Out  of  American  self-interest,  the 
State  Department  took  over  the  for- 
eign-aid program  and  converted  it 
into  an  instrument  for  the  preserva- 
tion of  the  status  quo.  ...  It  is  the 
imperialism  of  enforced  status  quo,  or 
at  best,  of  the  mandatory  wait  and 
see.  In  the  pursuit  of  self-interest  and 
survival,  we  have  slipped  into  one  of 
the  oldest  of  patterns  with  the  very 
newest  of  political  ideas  as  the  means. 

He  intends  that  these  words  and 
^thers  should  anger  his  reader.  He 
concludes  much  as  Mr.  Ledercr  does, 
Lhat: 

We  should  use  anger  intelligently. 
If  the  strangle-hold  of  foreign-aid 
bureaucrats  is  to  be  broken,  public 
opinion  must  become  as  well  organ- 
ized as  are  those  bureaucrats  them- 
selves. They  are  smug  and  secure  in 
their  rich  empire.  It  will  take  no 
small  effort  to  dislodge  them.  A 
complacent  people  will  not  do  so. 

In  a  postscript  he  outlines  nine 
specific  steps  which  should  be  taken 
to  change  the  administration  of 
foreign  aid  (in  which  he  firmly  be- 
lieves). They  are  in  part  based  on  an 
MIT  study  on  foreign  aid  (prepared 
at  the  Senate's  request)  which,  with 
these  two  books,  should  be  required 
reading  for  us  all.        Norton,  |3.50 

Communication  Among  Social  Bees, 

by  Martin  Lindauer. 

Mr.  Lindauer  starts  by  explaining 
briefly  the  work  that  Professor  Karl 
von  Frisch  has  done  over  the  last 
fifteen  years  studying  the  ways  in 
which  bees  communicate.  For  in- 
stance, the  foragers,  by  round  dances 
or  tail-wagging  dances,  indicate  to 
the  rest  of  the  hive  the  distance  and 
direction  and  suitability  of  swarm- 
ing sites.  This  was  all  most  extraordi- 
nary news  to  me  and  when  he  further 
explains  that  human  beings  who 
have  studied  this  language  can  tell 
with  exactitude  where  the  bees  will 
swarm,  I  read  on  with  fascination. 


He  describes  an  experiment  and  con- 
cludes: 

However,  there  is  no  better  proof 
for  the  correctness  of  the  interpreta- 
tion of  the  dance  of  the  bees,  as  it  has 
been  given  by  Professor  von  Frisch, 
and  that  we  correctly  understand  the 
language  of  the  bees,  than  the  experi- 
ment just  described.  The  nesting 
place  was  completely  unknown  to  us 
beforehand,  for  the  scouting  bees  had 
chosen  it  themselves.  We  were  able 
only  to  observe  the  dancing  bees  in 
the  swarm  and  to  decide  from  their 
behavior  the  location  of  what  they 
had  found.  We  did  not  follow  the 
swarm  as  it  moved  into  its  new  dwell- 
ing: we  were  there  at  the  future 
nesting  place  hours  before  its  arrival. 

Dr.  Lindauer  has  spent  years  ex- 
perimenting with  and  studying  bees 
of  all  kinds  and  countries  and  has 
discovered  "high  levels  of  accom- 
plishment in  insect  sensory  organs." 
His  experiments  are  here  most  clearly 
and  lucidly  explained  and  illustrated 
with  charts  and  photographs.  A  won- 
derftdly  interesting  book  even  to  the 
most  unscientific  reader. 

Harvard,  $4.75 

FORECAST 

For  August 

Season  of  Mists  by  Honor  Tracy 
will  be  published  by  Random  House. 

J.  D.  Salinger's  first  book  since  the 
1951  publication  of  The  Catcher  in 
the  Rye  will  come  from  Little, 
Brown  late  in  the  month.  It  is  called 
Franny  and  Zooey  and  will  include 
the  two  long  short  stories  which  ap- 
peared in  The  New  Yorker  in  1955 
and  1957,  with  a  thousand-word  in- 
troduction by  the  author. 

For  Fall 

Houghton  Mifflin  announces  a 
new  novel  by  Carson  McCullers, 
Clock  Without  Hands. 

Atheneum  will  publish  Virgilia 
Peterson's  autobiography,  A  Matter 
of  Life  and  Death. 

The  author  of  A  Separate  Peace, 
John  Knowles,  has  delivered  his  new 
novel.  Morning  at  Antibes,  to  Mac- 
millan  for  fall  publication. 

Clare  Boothe  Luce  has  a  novel 
called  The  Shark  Rock  Mission  on 
Atheneum's  September  list. 

Little,  Brown  announces  the  fall 
publication  of  a  biography  of  Clark 
Gable  by  Jean  Garceau,  his  private 
secretary  for  twenty-one  years. 


SUPPLEMENT 


"AtlaM 


Special  Supple 
PSYCHIATRY 


PSYCHIATRY  TODAY 

authoritative,  lucid,  and  timely  dis- 
cussions of  the  issues  in  American 
psychiatry  in  1961. 

50  EXTRA  PAGES 

12  PENETRATING  ARTICLES 

Plus  all  regular  contents 

NOIV  ON  SAUS 


A 

playful 
mammal 
teaches 
the  Navy 
tricks 


porpoises  and  sonar 

By  Winthrop  N.  Kellogg 

The  amazing  and  amusing  story  of  9 
years'  research  into  the  echo-ranging 
system  with  which  the  porpoise  detects 
distant  objects,  avoids  invisible  obsta- 
cles and  even  selects  its  menu  by  sound 
. .  .  how  its  brain,  in  some  ways  more 
complex  than  man's,  has  been  "drafted" 
to  help  the  Navy  improve  sonar  gear. 

Illus.     $4.50 

At  bookstores 
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iVl  LJ  O  1  Ci  m  the  round 


BY  DISCUS 


THE     NEW     TRISTAN 

Young  intellectuals  have  put  Wagner 
aside — for  good  reasons — but  a  new 
album  of  one  great  opera  reminds  us 
of  his  emotional  power. 


The  one  opera  that  represents  the 
nineteenth  century  is  Wagner's 
Tristan  iind  Isolde,  and  it  still  holds 
its  own  although  it  means  far  less  to 
the  younger  generation  than  it  used 
to.  Young  intellectuals  these  days 
tend  to  take  Wagner  on  sufferance, 
^vhereas  only  thirty  years  ago  he  was 
still  a  vital  force.  Part  of  the  reason, 
though  by  no  means  the  major  part, 
lies  in  the  scarcity  of  singers  and  the 
sudden  lapse  in  the  ^\■agner  tradi- 
tion. Those  who  hear  Tristan  as 
sung  by  the  present  crop  of  helden- 
tenors  and  dramatic  sopranos  have 
no  idea  of  the  way  the  opera  really 
can  sound.  One  has  to  go  back  to  the 


1930s,  when  singers  like  Melchior, 
Schorr,  Flagstad,  Leider,  Branzell, 
and  Rethberg,  in  their  full  glory, 
were  giving  us  unforgettable  Wagner 
performances.  Now,  it  may  be  a 
truism  that  every  age  thinks  the 
previous  age  was  better;  but  when 
it  comes  to  ^Vaguer  singing  we  at 
least  are  on  firm  ground.  The  previ- 
ous age  ions  better,  as  a  quick  look 
at  the  casts  of  any  opera  house  in 
the  world  will  demonstrate. 

But  more  than  the  lack  of  ade- 
quate performance,  the  general  lack 
of  interest  in  Wagner  on  the  part  of 
the  intellectuals  stems  from  today's 
prevailing  musical  philosophy.  By 
far  the  biggest  musical  influence  of 
the  post-AVorld  War  II  scene  has 
been  Anton  Webern,  who  stands  for 
everything  that  Wagner  was  not.  Or, 
to  put  it  another  way,  Wagner  is 
the  macrocosmos,  Webern  the  micro- 
cosmos.  The  Wagner  operas  run  for 
hours  and  hours  (for  eternity,  snort 


pr 


ap 


the  smart  young  people  today);  thelsK 
Webern  pieces  are  enormously  con 
centrated  and  elliptical.  It  is  part  oi 
the  age;  the  trend  ever  since  tht 
1920s  has  been  toward  anti-romanti 
cism;  toward  condensation,  intel 
lectualization,  and  dodecaphonism 
(Indeed,  the  beginnings  of  the  trcndjco 
can  be  discerned  in  Wagner's  own  st( 
lifetime,  when  the  disenchanted 
Nict/sche  cast  the  Wagner  operas 
from  the  pale,  and  loudly  upheld 
Carmen  as  the  ideal.) 

It  could  be  that  the  anti-Wagner- 
ians  are  perfectly  correct  in  their 
basic  criticisms.  Wagner's  theories 
never  did  work  out  as  he  intended; 
and  he  was  the  world's  worst  writer; 
and  his  librettos  are  static;  and 
his  music  can  be  repetitious;  and  his 
eternal  chromatic  slitherings,  his 
avoidance  of  a  fixed  tonality,  can  be 
irritating.  That  said,  one  puts  on 
the  records  of  Tristan,  or  Meister- 
singer,  or  W alkiir e—dind.  is  promptly 
lost  in  Wagner's  world.  He  was  too 
powerful  a  creator  and  his  music  is 
too  strong.  Intellectually  one  might 
agree  with  all  that  the  anti-Wagner-: 
ians  say.  But  emotionally  one  is 
swept  away.  One  ignores  his  muzzy 
philosophy  and  is  simply  drowned  in 
the  ocean  of  integrated  sound  that 
"W^agner  has  created.  He  may  be  less 
popular  than  he  used  to  be,  but  he 
will  always  be  with  us.  And,  given 
the  proper  singers,  there  well  coidd 
be  a  renaissance. 

The  Sixth  Disc 

The  proper  singers  are  certainly 
not  contained  in  the  new  album  of 
Tristan  und  Isolde.  George  Solti 
leads  the  Vienna  Philharmonic,  with 
a  cast  consisting  of  Birgit  Nilsson 
and  Fritz  Uhl  in  the  title  roles, 
Regina  Resnik  (Brangaene),  Tom 
Krause  (Kinvenal),  and  Arnold  van 
Mill  (Marke).  The  five  discs  of  the 
opera  are  accompanied  by  a  sixth 
disc  which  contains  the  story  of  the 
way  the  engineers  and  musical  staff 
prepared  the  opera  (London  A  450(5, 
mono;  OSA  1502,  stereo).  That 
bonus  disc  in  some  ways  is  the  great- 
est sales  pitch  since  the  Dutch  talked 
the  Indians  out  of  Manhattan  Island. 

As  narrated  by  John  Culshaw,  it 
assumes  that  this  is  the  greatest  stereo 
recording  in  history.  It  also  comes 
right  out  and  slates  that  because 
stereo  is  a  new  art  form,  the  music 
lias  to  be  a(iaj)icd  for  stereo,  and  not 


.tereo  to  the  music.  The  booklet  of 
\:>rogram  notes  also  says  as  much. 

"We  were  very  unhappy  about  the 
isual  stage  setting  for  Act  I,"  writes 
|Vfr.  Culshaw,  the  recording  director. 
'.  .  .  Always  ungainly  and  slightly 
preposterous  on  the  stage,  this  be- 
omes      hopelessly      ambiguous      in 

t tereo;  and  so  we  sketched  a  different 
pproach,  which  involved  swinging 

he  whole  imagined  setting  by  about 
it'orty-five  degrees,  so  that  the  ship  is 

liagonally  across  the  stage,  with 
ilsolde's  cabin  occupying  the  space 
from  extreme  (audience)  left  to 
ibout  center,  and  the  stern  of  the 
ship  slightly  back  on  the  extreme 
right.    Whether  better  or   not   as   a 

tage  setting,  this  certainly  makes 
>tereo  sense.  .  .  .  The  idea  farthest 
from  our  minds  was  to  copy,  on 
records,  what  is  heard  in  the  average 
opera  house;  instead,  we  tried  to  en- 
sure that  the  intense  emotional  ex- 
DPrience  of  Tristan  itnd  Isolde 
sHfuld  survive  the  transfer  to  a 
mtdium  unknown  to  its  composer, 
and  use  to  the  full  whatever  ad- 
vantage that  different  medium  could 
ibestow." 

! 

Realism  by  Stereo 

Well,  this  is  honest.  It  also  out- 
lines a  new  aesthetic  that  can,  and 
will,  be  argued  for  a  long  time  to 
come.  Which  is  more  important:  the 
music  or  the  recording  engineers? 
the  score  or  the  new  electronic 
medium? 

But,  curiously  enough,  despite  all 
this  to-do,  the  new  Tristan  album  is 
not  as  revolutionary-sounding  as 
might  be  imagined.  It  does  have  its 
moments  of  unusual  realism,  though 
no  more  than  other  good  stereo 
recordings  from  major  companies 
(the  recent  Madama  Butterfly  from 
Capitol  is  a  good  example).  Mr. 
Culshaw  and  his  workers  have  been 
striving  for  the  illusion  of  depth  and 
stage  placement.  Thus  at  the  very 
opening  of  the  opera,  the  voice  of 
the  steersman  is  heard  from  a  dis- 
tance. Throughout  the  act,  Isolde's 
voice  comes  from  the  left.  In  the 
Liebestod  she  is  well  centered.  But 
that  is  no  more  or  no  less  than  any 
good  stereo  recording  should  offer. 

On  the  other  hand,  there  are  sug- 
gestions that  the  engineers  have  been 
overzealous.  Sometimes  the  singers 
come  well  over  the  orchestra,  and  at 
other  times  the  orchestra  blots  them 


Three  superb  new  additions  to  Angelas 

GREAT  RECORDINGS 
OF  THE  CENTURY" 


For  those  who  treasure  the  great  perform- 
ances of  the  past.  Angel  presents  another 
group  in  its  series  of  faithful  restorations. 
In  technical  clarity  and  fidelity,  these 
recordings  far,  far  surpass  the  originals.  In 
spirit,  they  are  the  originals,  for  they  bring 
you  the  great  artists  of  another  era,  living, 
and  singing  and  playing  again.  As  Martin 
Mayer  said  in  Esquire,  "In  every  case,  the 
spirit  of  the  original  inspired  performance 
has  been  retained  . . .  these  Angel  reissues 
are  a  genuine  miracle." 

Each  recording  is  accompanied  by  a  fascinat' 
ing  booklet  about  the  work,  the  performance 
and  the  artist.  These  reissues  are,  of  course, 
available  only  in  monophonic  versions. 


THE  YOUNG  CARUSO  Were  it  not  for  Caruso's  original  recordings,  some  of 
which  are  contained  in  this  album,  millions  of  music  lovers  all  over  the  world 
would  never  have  heard  the  power  and  majesty  of  his  voice.  Today,  the  great 
recordings  made  by  Caruso  when  he  was  in  his  late  twenties  and  early  thirties 
(1902-04)  have  been  brought  as  close  to  modern  fidelity  standards  as  possible. 
You  can  thrill  to  the  great  tenor  in  this  album  which  includes  Questa  o  quella 
from  Rigoletto,  Celeste  Aida,  and  his  Vesti  la  giubba  from  Pagliacci  —  the  per- 
formance which  won  the  young  Caruso  his  Metropolitan  Opera  contract. 


Angel  COLH  119. 


r^4J^Ji^\^^'.^^^^ 


THE  VERDI  REQUIEM  with  four  of  the  century's  greatest  singers.  This  recording 
recreates  an  historic  occasion  in  the  Rome  Opera  House . . .  the  classic  1939 
performance  of  the  Verdi  Requiem  with  Maria  Caniglia,  soprano,  Ebe  Stignani, 
mezzo-soprano,  Beniamino  Gigli,  tenor,  and  Ezio  Pinza,  bass.  Conducted  by 
Tullio  Serafin  with  the  orchestra  and  chorus  of  the  Rome  Opera  House. 
Angel  GRB  4002  (2  disk  set). 

FURTWANGLER  conducts  the  Beethoven  Ninth 

in  what  has  been  called  "an  immensely  purposeful, 
intensely  heroic"  interpretation.  Originally  recorded 
at  the  re-opening  of  the  Bayreuth  Festival  in  1951, 
this  performance  brought  together  Elisabeth 
Schwarzkopf,  Elisabeth  Hongen,  Hans  Hopf  and 
Otto  Edelmann,  with  the  Bayreuth  Festival  Orches- 
tra and  Chorus.  In  its  new  re-issue.  Angel  has  uti- 
lized the  amazing  technical  advances  of  the  past 
decade  to  bring  you  even  greater  brilliance  and 
beauty.  Angel  GRB  4003  (2  disk  set). 


At  your  Angel  Dealer's  now 


NEXT    MONTH    IN 


Harper's 

-^        magazine 

ROBERT  McNAMARA 
AND  HIS  GENERALS 

An  exclusive  report  on  the  tough 
and  zealous  men  locked  in  a  power 
struggle  inside  the  Pentagon. 

By  Joseph  Kraft 


ART  AND  SOCIETY 

The  former  director  of  England's 
National  Gallery  tackles  the  thorn- 
iest of  all  the  thorny  controversies 
that  keep  today's  art  world  in  a 
turmoil. 

By  Sir  Kenneth  Clark 


THE  UNEMPLOYMENT 
INSURANCE  GAME 

A  businessman  looks  at  the 
abuses  that  pervert  the  purpose  of 
our  unemployment-insurance  sys- 
tem. 

By  Seth  Levine 


YOUR  UNKNOWN  HEIRS 

How  patronage  politicians  may 
take  a  bite  out  of  your  estate 
.  .  .  quite  legally. 

By  Murray  Toigh  Bloom 


ALSO:  Seven  Poems  by  Boris 
Pasternak,  lransl(il<'<l  hy  Hohvrl 
Lowell;  T\ii^  Ain«'ri<;ni  Talciil  for 
Offending  Pcopb-.  hy  D.  11.  BatUvr 


MUSIC     IN     THE     ROUND 

out.  Certainly  Nilsson's  voice  in  her 
Tristan  iind  Isolde  appearances  last 
season  at  the  Metropolitan  Opera 
sounded  fuller  and  more  colorful 
than  it  does  on  these  discs.  In  all 
fairness,  this  new  Tristan  recording 
has  some  exciting  moments  of  sheer 
audio.  But  it  is  less  of  a  piece  than 
its  competitor,  the  old  Flagstad- 
Schock-Furtwangler  performance  re- 
issued on  five  Angel  discs. 

Getting  to  the  London  perform- 
ance itself  (and  high  time,  too),  it  is 
on  the  whole  disappointing.  Nilsson 
is  by  far  the  best  singer  in  the  cast, 
even  if  she  is  not  in  particularly  good 
voice.  She  sounds  tired,  and  there  is 
at  times  a  feeling  of  strain  not  nor- 
mally associated  with  her  work.  She 
is  the  greatest  living  Wagnerian 
soprano,  and  when  she  lets  loose, 
the  results  can  be  thrilling.  Here, 
though,  she  is  not  consistently  heard 
at  her  best. 

Newcomer  from  Bayreuth 

Fritz  Uhl,  the  Tristan,  will  be  a 
new  name  to  most  Americans.  He 
is  thirty-three  years  old,  a  Bayreuth 
regular,  and  will  make  his  American 
debut  in  San  Francisco  this  fall.  His 
voice  does  have  the  virtue  of  fresh- 
ness, and  he  is  an  intelligent  mu- 
sician. Nature  has  not  given  him  a 
big  voice,  however,  and  his  singing 
is  more  lyric  than  heroic.  Resnik 
and  Krause  are  something  below 
routine.  Resnik  has  a  bad  waver  and 
a  severely  limited  top  range.  She  is 
not  old,  but  sings  with  the  voice  of 
an  old  singer.  Krause  is  rough-sound- 
ing and  not  always  on  pitch.  The 
role  of  King  Marke,  as  sung  by  van 
Mill,  is  one  of  the  better  things  in 
the  nlbum.  He  has  a  strong,  clear 
voice,  and  he  sings  ^\•ith  dig;iiiiy. 

If  not  for  Solti,  the  album  might 
be  a  disaster.  Fortunalch  he  is  one 
of  the  best  W^agner  conductors 
around,  \\\i\\  a  fine  sense  of  pace  and 
a  knowledge  of  style.  He  is  one  of 
the  few  who  can  take  a  slow  tempo 
and  keep  it  from  falling  apart.  He 
has  firmness,  strength,  and  a  belief 
in  what  he  is  doing,  plus  the  Icch- 
ni(]ue  to  cany  his  ideas  through.  As 
he  here  has  a  great  orchestra  at  his 
disjjosal,  thai  pari  of  the  oj)era  (omcs 
ihrough  brilliantly.  And  is  ihcic  not 
a  slifJiig  scgMicnl  of  opinion  that 
hf)l(is  the  orf  hcstral  element  to  be  by 
fat  the  most  important  factor  in  the 
W'agiH  I  ojjcias? 


JAZZ 


Eric  Larrabee 


note6 


THROWBAC] 


On  the  jacket  cover  of  We  Insis 
three  young  Southern  Negroes,  si 
ins  at  a  lunch  counter,  stare  back  ovc 
their  shoulders  at  the  camera,  the 
eyes  defiant  and  blank  with  the  lon< 
learned  expectation  of  being  hurt. 
is  the  mood  of  the  album,  and  of  Ma 
Roach's  and  Oscar  Brown,  Jr.'s  "Free 
dom  Now  Suite."  Stirred  by  the  grov 
ing  Negro  intransigence  in  the  Soutj 
and  increasing  independence  in  Africr 
Negro  jazz  musicians  have  begun  ti 
emerge  from  their  indifference  to  pol, 
tics,  and  this  record  is  one  of  the  results 

It  recalls  slavery,  recalls  Africa.  I 
says  that  the  Negro,  in  rage  and  anger 
will  no  longer  wait  patiently  for  free 
dom  someday,  but  wants  it  now.  Thes« 
'are  themes  that  no  Negro  musiciar 
can  take  up  without  a  sense  of  deef 
personal  involvement,  and  every  nou 
in  the  "Freedom  Now  Suite"  is  im 
printed  with  the  intensity  of  the  players 
feeling.  One  hesitates  to  criticize  them 
therefore,  since  criticism  of  the  music 
is  bound  to  be  interpreted  as  criticism 
of  the  emotions  behind  it;  but  I  will 
have  to  risk  that,  because  I  feel  thai 
something  is  seriously  going  wrong  here 

At  one  point  in  a  section  called  "All 
Africa,"  Miss  Abbey  Lincoln,  a  supper- 
club  singer  who  has  turned  more  seri- 
ously to  jazz,  finds  herself  chanting  the 
names  of  various  African  tribes,  "Bantu 
.  .  .  Zulu  .  .  .  Watusi  .  .  .  Ashanti,"  but 
she  sings  them  without  any  real  sense 
of  their  meaning.  VVe  are  not  in  Africa, 
we  are  back  in  the  1930s;  and  this  is 
the  Whitmancsque  roll  call  of  the  rivers 
from  Pare  Lorentz's  film,  or  the  em- 
barrassing fatix-naif  rhetoric—".  .  .  and 
that's  what  Abe  Lincoln  said!  .  .  ."  of 
"Ballad  for  Americans."  ' 

Miss  Lincoln,  especially  in  "Triptych." 
makes  a  sophisticated  attempt  to  simu- 
late savagery,  but  it  will  not  do.  It  is 
an  effort  to  whip  up  an  emotional  state 
of  mind  which  is  not  naturally  hers, 
much  as  she  may  wish  to  believe  that 
it  is.  No  one  can  deny  the  right  of 
American  Negroes  now,  after  so  main 
years  of  near-ohliviousncss  to  Africa,  to 
cultivate  their  sense  of  Africanism..  But 
they  will  do  themselves  a  great  disservice 
if  they  begin  to  treat  it  as  a  myth,  as  a 
rituaii/ed  background  to  their  own  no- 
bility and  dignity,  and  the  outcome 
will    l)e    not    art   but    propaganda. 

We  InsistI  "Freedom  Noiu  Suite,"  by 
.Max  Roach  and  Oscar  Brown,  jr.,  with 
Abljcy  Lincoln,  Coleman  Hawkins,  and 
Olaiunji.  C:aii(li(l    (stereo)  9002. 


RESEARCH 


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AMERICA  ^ 

UNDER  PRESSURE 

Adiai  E.  Stevenson 


McNAMARA      ^ 
AND  HIS  ENEMIES 

Joseph  Kraft 


.  ^'-  -..ji 


AND  SDCIETY 

Sir  Kenneth  Clark 


CULTURE-STRUCK 
CANADA 

Russell  Lynes 


:.rf  Scott"! 


Great 
Moments 


Founding  of  The  Aninicon  Medunl    lsso( ia(ion~one  of  n  series 
of  origindl  oil  fyaintings  (oinniissioned  by  Fnrke-Davis. 


in 
Medicine 


On  May  7,  1847,  some  250  physicians  Ironi  22  states- 
representing  10  nieclical  societies  and  28  colleges- 
met  among  the  nuisemn  exhibits  ol  The  Academy  ol 
Natural  Sciences  ol  Philadelphia  and  formed  Ihe 
American  Medical  Asscxiation.  The  first  j)resident, 
Dr.  Nathaniel  (Chapman,  was  welcomed  to  ollice  by 
the  chairman,  Dr.  Jonathan  Knight. 

This  first  convention  pledged  the  lledgliiig  organi- 
zation tcj  principles  to  which  it  has  held  ever  since: 
insistence  npon  continuing  imjjiovemcnts  in  the 
cjuality  o[   nieditai   (ate  and  ol   medic  .d  echuah'oii, 


and  upon  development  ol  a  Cc:)de  of  Ethics  which 
benefits  both  patient  and  physician.  Though  some 
of  its  advances  have  not  been  easily  won,  the  AMA 
has  come  to  be  recc:)gnized  as  one  of  the  world's 
impoi  taut  medical  organizations. 

Parke-Davis,  which  was  (ounded  as  a  maiuifacturer 
ol  better  medic  ines  just  19  years  later,  in  18{)("),  salutes 
The  American  Medical  Association  as  that  organi- 
zation continues  to  build  uj)on  the  firm  (oundatiou 
of  j)rofessional  and  j)ublic  service  envisioned  by  its 
lounders  IM  years  ago. 

COI-YRIOMT    nfrl  — PARKF,    DAVI"".    ft    COMPANY.    OFTROiT    3?.     MICHIGAN 


PARKE-DAVIS 


I'liiiire) s  III  licllci   iiic(}i(  iiics 


4 

4 


lew  for  you— a  more  useful  telephone  number! 


Y 

nuiT 
how 
1 
Cod 
whc. 
Th. 
pai 
for 

N( 


already  have  a  telephone 
'  this.   If  you  don't,  here's 
ook. 

ihree  digits  are  your  Area 

3y  tell  the  telephone  system 

of  the  country  you  live  in. 

three  digits  designate  your 

telephone  office,  and  the  last 

/oint  your  particular  phone. 

ar  phone  number.    Unique. 

ler  like  it  anywhere. 

ew  kind  of  number  helps 


others  reach  you— and  helps  you  reach 
others— faster. 

Area  Codes  here  new— 
All-Number  Calling  on  the  rise 

Today  the  majority  of  our  cus- 
tomers already  dial  their  Long  Dis- 
tance calls  directly  by  means  of  Area 
Codes.  Eventually  everyone  will  be 
able  to.  Until  then,  if  you  call  through 
the  Operator,  you  can  save  time  by 
giving  her  the  Area  Code  of  the  tele- 
phone you  are  calling  when  it  is  dif- 
ferent from  yours. 


And  already,  in  many  parts  of  the 
country,  letters  have  been  replaced  by 
numerals  in  telephone  numbers.  Be- 
fore this  change,  we  were  running  out 
of  usable  telephone  numbers  contain- 
ing letters,  while  phones  were  steadily 
increasing.  All-Number  Calling,  how- 
ever, will  give  us  enough  numbers  to 
meet  our  needs  into  the  next  century. 

Telephone  progress  like  this  benefits 
everyone.  Your  new  personal  tele- 
phone number  is  another  step  in  our 
effort  to  anticipate  the  needs  of  a 
growing  America. 


BELL   TELEPHONE  SYSTEM 


All-Number  Calling  may  permit  you 
to  use  simple,  tiny  number-buttons 
on  portable  phones  of  the  future. 


HARPER    &    BROTHERS 


Chairman  of  the  Executive 
Committee:  cass  canfield 

Chairman  of  the  Board: 

FRANK  S.  MACGREGOR 

President: 

RAYMOND  C.  HARWOOD 

Executive  Vice  President: 

EVAN   W.    THOMAS 

Vice  Presidents: 

EUGENE  EXMAN,  ORDWAY  TEAD, 

DANIEL   F.    BRADLEY,    JOHN    FISCHER, 

URSULA  NORDSTROM 

Treasurer:  Louis  f.  haynie 


HanDer' 


MAG  A 


ZINI 


PUBLISHED  BY 
HARPER  &  BROTHERS 


vol.  223,  NO.  1335 
AUGUST   1961 


ARTICLES 


MAGAZINE    STAFF 

Editor  in  Chief:  JOHN  fischer 

Managing  Editor:  russell  lynes 

Publisher:  JOHN  JAY  hughes 

Editors: 

KATHERINE  gauss  JACKSON 

CATHARINE  MEYER 

ROBERT  B.  SILVERS 

LUCY  DONALDSON 

MARION  K.  SANDERS 

Contributing  Editor: 

WILLIAM  S.  WHITE 

Editorial  Secretary:  rose  daly 
Editorial  Assistant: 

VIRGINIA  HUGHES 


ADVERTISING    DATA 

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Address  all  correspondence  rel.ilinn 

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49  East  33rd  St.,  New  York  16,  N.  V. 


21  America  Under  Pressure,  Adhii  E.  Stevenson 

25  How  Not  to  Build  a  Ball  Park,  Allan  Temko 

29  Your  Unknown  Heirs,  Murray  Teigli  Bloom 

34  Robinson  Crusoe  in  Florida,  Ja)i  de  Hortog 

41  McNamara  and  His  Enemies,  Joseph  Kraft 

49     How  to  Play  the  Unemployment-insurance  Game, 

Seth  Levine 

63     Our  National  Talent  for  Offending  People, 

D.  H.  Radler 

71     A  Matter  of  Motive,  Johy^  D.  Rosenberg 
74     Art  and  Society,  Kenneth  Clark 

FICTION 

54     The  Man  Who  Doubted,  Jack  Cope 

VERSE 

58     A  Psychiatrist's  Song,  Hilary  Corke 
11     Voyage,  Samuel  Menashe 

DEPARTMENTS 

6     Letters 

1 1     The  Editor's  Easy  Chair— yigoslavia's  flirtation 
WITH  free  ENTERPRISE,  John  Fischer 

16     After  Hours— clltlre-struck  canada,  Russell  Lynes 

83     Public  &  Personal— THE  good  old  simmertime, 

William  S.  White 

86  The  New  Books,  Stanley  Kunitz 

91  Books  in  lirief,  Kaiherine  Gauss  Jackson 

94  Music  in  the  Round,  Discus 

95  Jazz  Notes,  Eric  Larrabee 

cover  by  charles  goslin;  pho  i  ()(,r  \i'i  i :  hi  rt  glinn 
(magnum) 


i 


. 


BROWSE  WITHIN... 


IN  THE  NEXT  TWO  PAGES  you  will  find 
fifty-four  books  listed,  and  all  together 
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jBlvOiAf  SE  HEIvE...  for  books  you  may 


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455.THE  AGONY 
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186.  HAWAII  by 

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INN  by  OLIVER 
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449.WHO  KILLED 
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104.      ADVISE 
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iy  CARL  SAND- 
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A38 


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i Trademark  Reg.  U.  S.  Pat.  Off.  and  in  Canada 


LETTERS 


The  Coming  Bust  in 
the  Building  Boom 

To  THE  Editors: 

I  don't  know  Daniel  M.  Friedenberg 
but  I've  been  a  real  estate  operator  and 
builder  for  50  years,  47  of  which  have 
been  right  here  in  San  Francisco.  Fve 
built  266  commercial  buildings  in  my 
day.  In  fact,  I  believe  that  I've  built 
more  commercial  buildings  in  San  Fran- 
cisco than  anyone  else  so  I  should  be  a 
bit  familiar  with  the  business.  .  .  .  Mr. 
Friedenl^erg's  article,  "The  Coming  Bust 
in  the  Real  Estate  Boom"  [June],  is 
right  oiu  of  this  world  and  your  com- 
pany has  done  a  great  service  to  the 
investing  public  by  printing  it. 

Louis  R.  LuRiE 
San  Francisco,  Calif. 

Mr.  Friedenberg's  article  should  be  re- 
quired reading  for  students  of  architec- 
ture and  city  planning  in  our  univer- 
sities. It  is  a  sobering  reminder  of  the 
distance  between  the  lUopias  taught 
under  the  heading  of  city  planning  and 
the  reality  as  practiced  "in  the  field." 

Jan  Reiner,  Architect 
St.  Petersburg,  Fla. 

We  can  only  surmise  that  Mr.  Fried- 
enberg would  prefer  his  offices  in  an  old- 
fashioned  loft  rather  than  in  a  modern 
building.  He  does  not,  it  appears,  favor 
such  contemporary  advances  as  air-con- 
ditioning, electronic  elevators,  metal 
facades  and  tower  construction.  We,  as 
builders,  find  these  are  what  appeal  to 
tenants. 

We  take  serious  issue  with  the  allega- 
tions that  today's  buildings  are  inferior. 
If  this  were  true,  would  the  country's 
blue-chip  corporations  demand  that  their 
names  \)e  attached  to  the  skyscrapers 
being  l)uilt  in  vast  preponderance  by  the 
investment  builder?  Does  he  seriously 
entertain  the  notion  that  the  giants  of 
American  industry  sign  willy-nilly,  some- 
how blindfolded,  long-term  leases? 

In  (act,  all  buildings  are  fine-tooth- 
combed  by  a  battery  of  experts:  inspec- 
tors of  New  York's  Department  of 
liuildings;  independent  architects  and 
engineers  employed  by  financing  institu- 
tions; the  tenants  themselves  who  hire 
consultants  to  conduct  a  nuts-and-bolts 
inspection  of  the  space  they  will  be 
cominiiiing  themselves  tcj  over  a  jcnig 
period. 


Mr.  Friedenberg  ascribes  hypnotic 
powers  to  builders  and  claims  they  have 
hired  "Madison  Avenue  publicists  to 
persuade  tenants  that  they  need  enor- 
mous floors."  As  builders  of  many  of 
New  York's  largest  office  buildings,  we 
must  point  out  that  the  demand  for 
entire  floors  came  from  large  corpora- 
tions in  the  interest  of  their  efficiency. 
Heretofore,  most  tenants  took  only  parts 
of  floors. 

He  accuses  the  Real  Estate  Board  of 
conspiring  with  builders  to  cheat  tenants 
by  including  toilets,  corridors,  slop-sink 
closets,  etc.  in  full-floor  measurements. 
He  omits  the  fact  that  these  same 
facilities  are  excluded  in  Real  Estate 
Board  computations  for  divided  floors. 
Full-floor  tenants  use  exclusively  these 
facilities  and  they  are  therefore  included 
in  their  rentable  area. 

Mr.  Friedenberg  states  that  the  Pru- 
dential Insurance  Company  "obligingly" 
saved  us  from  "a  desperate  situation"  in 
building  666  Fifth  Avenue.  Far  from  be- 
ing desperate,  we  were  building  at  that 
time  two  office  buildings  in  California, 
four  15-story  apartment  buildings  in 
Brooklyn,  a  21-story  office  building  in 
Cleveland,  and  a  20-story  office  building 
in  Buffalo.  There  was  in  fact  no  sale- 
leaseback  arrangement  made  with  Pru- 
dential until  666  Fifth  Avenue  had  been 
substantially  rented.  We  bought  the 
land  and  envisioned  the  building  of  666 
a  full  two  years  before  any  financial 
commitment  was  obtained  from  Pru- 
dential. 

We  resent  very  much  the  author's  alle- 
gations which  do  not  apply  in  any  way 
to  the  many  reputable  real  estate  com- 
panies, in  which  group  we  include 
Tishman  Realty  &  Construction  Co., 
Inc.  Tishman  Realty,  investment  build- 
ers since  1898,  is  listed  on  the  New  York 
Stock  Exchange  and  is  one  of  the  major 
firms  in  the  United  States  engaging  in 
all  phases  of  real  estate  operations: 
property  acquisition,  construction,  rent- 
ing, and  management. 

For  over  62  years  we  have  built  apart- 
ment houses,  office  buildings,  and  shop- 
ping centers,  representing  a  total  invest- 
ment c)f  close  to  a  l)illion  dollars.  We 
now  own  and  operate  properties  that 
include  more  than  7,500  residential 
rooms  and  3,500,000  square  feet  of  office 
s))ace,  and  are  presently  constructing 
five  major  ay)artnient  buildings  in  four 
cities  aggregating  over  $^0  million  of 
construction  cost.  Compare  this  experi- 
ence with   Mr.   Friedenberg's. 

\oK\iAN  Tishman,  Pres. 

Tisliiii.iii  R(  ;ilty  (ionstruction  (x).,  Inc. 
New  York,  N.  Y. 


The  Author  Replies: 

Nothing  in  my  article  attacked  "such 
contemporary  advances  as  air-condition- 
ing." The  attack  was  made  against  the 
habit  of  downgrading  or  deliberately 
cheapening  building  products.  I  praised 
certain  buildings,  such  as  the  Lever 
Brothers  and  Seagram  buildings,  though 
these  also  are  built  in  full  contemporary 
design.  It  is  ncjt  "contemporary"  but 
bogus  contemporary  I  attacked. 

Many  giants  of  American  industry  do 
not  know  what  they  get  [when  they  con 
tract  for  a  building]  and  only  wake  up 
later.  Most  of  these  leases  are  made  on 
a  very  high  level  and  the  details  are 
handled  by  subordinates  much  later. 
The  "inspectors  of  New  York's  Depart 
ment  of  Buildings,"  etc.,  are  concerned 
with  what  is  legal,  not  a  superior  or 
inferior  product,  and  the  representatives 
of  insurance  companies  and  banks  are 
only  concerned  that  the  buildings  be 
constructed  according  to  the  Plans  and 
Specifications. 

Mr.  Tishman  is  only  repeating  what 
the  publicists  are  told  to  repeat  regard- 
ing the  "efficiency"  of  large  floors. 

Mr.  Tishman  is  explaining  the  ration- 
ale of  why  tenants  occupying  single 
floors  pay  for  nonusable  space,  non- 
usable  in  the  sense  that  the  space  can- 
not be  employed  in  the  direct  pursuit 
of  tenants'  business.  The  outside  walls 
exclusively  protect  full-floor  tenants  and 
the  elevators  stopping  at  their  floors  are 
for  their  exclusive  use.  Why  not  include 
these  spaces  as  well,  following  the  argu 
ment? 

It  would  seem,  according  to  Mr.  Tish- 
man's  own  statement,  that  one  factor  iti] 
the   financial   background  of   666   Fift 
Avenue  was  overexpansion.    Of  course; 
the  Tishman  interests  bought  the  Ian 
years  before  the  financial  commitment 
You  do  not  obtain  financing  before  you 
have  something  to  finance. 

In  conclusion,  I  might  add  that  the 
roar  arising  from  my  article  indicates 
the  old  adage  that  the  truth  hurts. 

Daniel  M.  Friedenberg 
New  York,  N.  Y. 


Runaway  Reactor 

To  THE  Editors: 

Ralph  E.  Lapp  has  done  an  excellent' 
job  in  "A  Small  Atomic  Accident" 
[June]  describing  the  circinnstances  sur- 
rounding the  SL-1  nuclear  excursion 
which  cau.sed  the  tragic  loss  of  threes 
lives  at  the  Atomic  Energy  Commission's 
National  Reactor  Testing  Station  in 
Idaho.  The  AFL-CIO  has  for  many  yt  ll^ 
been  urging  strong  standards  and  regu- 
lations dealing  with  the  ojieration  of 
reactors  and  the  use  of  other  fissionable 
materials  of  less  than  critical  mass  in 
medicine,  industry,  agriculture,  and  re- 


I 


|[ 


CHOOSE   EITHER  MACBETH  or   THE   TAMING   OF  THE   SHREW 


>iuiti:r§§ 


FREE 


\"A  moving  and  brilliant  Macbeth." 
TIME  MAGAZINE 


^^:"^ 


"The  Taming  of  the  Shrew  is  as  light 
as  a  charlotte  riisse  and  it  is  played 
that  way  .  .  ,  Trevor  Howard  as  the 
swaggering  husband,  Margaret 
Leighton  as  the  lady  ivho  learns  her 
Planners  and  Robert  Stephens  as  the 
servant  turned  master,  propel  the 
farce  along." 

THE  NEW  YORK  TIMES 


AS   YOUR   INTRODUCTION   TO  THE 

Shakespeare  Recording  Society 

Here  is  your  opportunity  to  add  to  your  record  collection  the  consummate  performances 
of  Shakespeare's  works  .  .  .  recorded  specifically  for  home  listening  enjoyment  by 
Caedmon  Records  for  the  Shakespeare  Recording  Society.  Each  of  Shakespeare's  plays 
is  being  recorded  complete,  in  full  length  productions  ...  in  brilliant  high  fidelity, 
monaural  or  stereo  . .  .  and  featuring  the  outstanding  actors  and  actresses  of  our  times: 


Sir  John  Gielgud 
Sir  Ralph  Richardson 
Sir  Michael  Redgrave 
Albert  Finney 
Trevor  Howard 


Dame  Peggy  Ashcroft 
Dame  Edith  Evans 
Claire  Bloom 
Siobhan  McKenna 
Celia  Johnson 
Margaret  Leighton 


Richard  Burton 

Stanley  Holloway 

Cyril  Cusack 

Frank  Silvera 

Anthony  Quayle 

.  .  .  and  dozens  of  others 


'Tit  beauty  truly  blent" 

Twelfth  Night,  ACT  I,  SCENE  5 

The  Shakespeare  Recording  Society  series  com- 
bines outstanding  stagecraft,  scholarship,  pack- 
aging and  engineering  to  bring  you  exciting, 
living  Shakespeare  you  and  your  family  will 
enjoy  and  cherish  for  a  lifetime. 
Never  before  has  such  a  distinguished  company 
been  assembled  to  perform  Shakespeare— under 
the  direction  of  Peter  Wood  and  Howard  Sack- 
ler,  two  of  the  most  widely-acclaimed  directors 
of  Shakespeare  and  spoken-word  recordings. 
Each  record  set  is  packaged  in  a  handsome, 
durable  box— with  an  original  and  brilliant  cov- 
er design.  Each  album  contains  background 
notes  by  Professor  G.  B.  Harrison,  distinguished 
Shakespearean  authority,  as  well  as  the  complete 
Penguin  text,  edited  by  Professor  Harrison,  in 
5 '/2  X  8V2  book  form.  The  engineering  of  the 
series  has  been  hailed  by  both  drama  critics  and 
audiophiles. 

"The  gift  doth  stretch  itself  ..." 

Alfs  Well  that  Ends  Well,  ACT  II,  SCENE  1 


When  you  join  the  Shakespeare  Recording  So- 
ciety, you  may  choose  as  your  enrollment  gift 
either  Macbeth  or  The  Taming  of  the  Shrew. 
Then,  with  your  fifth  purchase  and  with  every 


four  purchases  thereafter,  you  will  receive,  as  a 
bonus,  a  Caedmon  spoken-word  recording  or  set. 

"Thrift,  thrift,  Horatio!" 

Hamlet.  ACT  I,  SCENE  2 

Six  plays  are  now  available  from  the  Society: 

Macbeth    •    The  Taming  of  the  Shrew 

Othello    •    The  Winter  s  Tale 

Romeo  and  Juliet    *    Measure  for  Measure 

Additional  performances  will  be  released  on  the 
average  of  one  every  two  months.  Two-record 
sets  are  available  to  members  for  S8.90;  you 
pay  only  S12.90  for  three  records— plus  a  small 
charge  for  postage  and  handling.  These  special 
members'  discounts  are  far  below  regular  retail 
prices.  You  may  choose  either  monaural  or 
itereo  at  the  same  low  prices,  and  need  buy  only 
three  albums,  in  addition  to  your  initial  pur- 
chase, the  first  year  you  are  a  member.  You  may 
cancel  your  membership  any  time  thereafter. 

In  addition,  the  Society  has  prepared  a  limited 
supply  of  9  X  1  2  reproductions  of  a  new  Lionel 
Dillon  drawing  of  Shakespeare— a  striking  black- 
and-white  wood-cut  portrait— suitable  for  fram- 
ing. These  portraits  are  not  for  sale  anywhere, 
at  any  price,  but  are  free  to  new  members. 


"The  affair  cries  haste  ..." 

Othello,  ACT  I,  SCENE  3 

Use  this  handy  coupon  now  to  enroll  in  the  Shakespeare  Recording  Society.  Enroll 
promptly  .  .  .  and  receive  an  extra  bonus— the  Dillon  drawing  of  Shakespeare— free. 


MEMBERSHIP  ENROLLMENT  FORM 

Please  enroll  me  as  a  member  of  the  Shakespeare  Recording  Society,  Inc.,  and 
send  me  the  album  checked  as  my  free  gift:  □  Macbeth  □  The  Taming  of  the  Shrew 
Also  send  me,  as  a  gift,  the  portrait  of  Shakespeare  by  Lionel  Dillon. 


Whether  I  choose  stereophonic  or  monaural  albums, 
I  will  pay  58.90  for  each  two-record  album;  SI  2.90 
for  three-record  albums— plus  a  small  charge  for 
postage  and  handling.  I  may  order  as  many  sets  of 
a  particular  play  as  I  wish  at  these  special  prices. 
Additional  Shakespeare  works— released  on  an,  aver- 
age of  one  every  two  months— will  be  described 
in  advance.   I   may  reject  recordings  simply  by  re- 


turning the  form  provided. 

I  agree  to  buy  four  albums  ( including  my  initial 
order )  the  first  year  I  am  a  member,  and  am  free 
to  cancel  any  time  thereafter.  If  I  continue  as  a 
member,  I  shall  receive  with  my  ftfth  purchase,  and 
with  every  four  purchases  thereafter,  a  free  Caedmon 
spoken-word  recording  or  set.  ( I  understand  that 
my  free  gift  album  does  not  constitute  a  purchase. ) 


In  addition  to  my  free  album,  send  me,  as  my 
initial  membership  selection,  the  '  album  or 
albums  checked: 

□  Macbeth,  with  Anthony  Quayle,  Gwen  Ffrangcon 
Davies  and  Stanley  Holloway.  (Two-record  album, 
S8.9O) 

Q  The  Taming  of  the  Shrew,  with  Trevor  Howard 
and  Margaret  Leighton.  (Two-record  album,  S8.90) 

□  Othello,  with  Frank  Silvera,  Cyril  Cusack,  Celia 
Johnson  and  Anna  Massey,  (Three-record  album, 
SI2.9O) 

□  The  Winter's  Tale,  with  Sir  John  Gielgud  and 
Dame  Peggy  Ashcroft.  (Three-record  album, 
$12.90) 

Q  Romeo  and  Juliet,  with  Claire  Bloom,  Albert 
Finney  and  E>ame  Edith  Evans.  ( Three-record  al- 
bum, S  12.90) 

□  Measure  for  Measure,  with  Sir  John  Gielgud, 
Margaret  Leighton  and  Sir  Ralph  Richardson. 
(Three-record  album,  $12.90) 


Until  further  notice,  send  records  in: 

D   Monaural     (can    be    played    on    any    3.^/^  RPM 
phonograph  ) 

D  Stereo  ( can  be  played  only  on  stereophonic 
equipment) 

Save  extra  money!  □  Check  here  if  you  are 
including  payment  for  your  initial  order  now— 
saving  the  Society  billing  expense— and  we  will  pay 
postage  and  handling  charges  on  your  first  shipment. 
(New  York  City  residents,  please  add  3^?  sales  tax) 

Name 


(PLEASE  PRINT) 


Address 


City 


Zone       State 


H1H 


The  Shakespeare  Recording  Society,  Inc.,  461  Eighth  Avenue,  New  York  I,  N.  Y. 


8 


LETTERS 


search.  .  .  .  The  experience  of  organized 
labor  in  the  nuclear  field  during  the 
past  several  years  leads  to  these  three 
general  observations: 

1.  An  indispensable  element  of  a 
progressive  peaceful  atomic  program  is 
confidence  of  workers  and  the  general 
public  that  such  progress  can  be  attained 
with  a  minimum  of  risk  to  their  health 
and  safety. 

2.  The  attainment  of  such  a  general 
atmosphere  of  confidence  has  been 
severely  hampered  because  of  over- 
emphasis by  the  AEC  on  the  promo- 
tional aspects  of  peaceful  atomic  de- 
velopment and  underemphasis  on  sound 
and  uniform  safety  standards  and  regu- 
lations and  their  adequate  enforcement. 

3.  The  administrative  machinery 
within  the  AEC  for  carrying  out  sound 
regulatory  programs  in  the  field  of  radia- 
tion health  and  safety  is  outstandingly 
inadequate  and  in  need  of  drastic  over- 
hauling. 

Andrew  J.  Biemiller 

Dir.,  Dept.  of  Legislation 

Chmn.,  AFL-CIO  Staff  Subcommittee 

on  Atomic  Energy  &  Natural  Resources 

Washington,  D.  C. 

Fhe  Author  Explains: 

I  would  like  to  clarify  the  formal  ad- 
ministrative setup  at  the  AEC's  Idaho 
station  mentioned  in  my  article.  The 
.\EC  has  over-all  responsibility  for  the 
station.  It  contracts  with  several  pri- 
vate firms  for  reactor  site  operations, 
Combustion  Engineering  Inc.  being  the 
operating  contractor  for  the  SL-1  reactor. 
Military  personnel  at  the  SL-1  site  were 
under  the  general  supervision  of  Com- 
bustion Engineering  Inc.  The  SL-1 
reactor  was  part  of  the  program  of 
the  Army  Reactors  Branch  of  the  AEC's 
Division  of  Reactor  Development.  The 
Department  of  Defense  did  not  have 
responsibility  for  this  SL-1  reactor. 
This  is  a  rather  complex  relationship 
which  I  feel  should  be  spelled  out  in 
detail. 

The  release  of  the  AEC's  report  on 
SL-1  on  June  11  as  well  as  the  thorough 
public  airing  of  the  issue  by  Representa- 
tive Chet  Holifield  (Joint  Committee  on 
Atomic  Energy)  sets  forth  full  details  of 
the  SL-1  accident.  As  a  critic  of  the 
.AEC,  I  am  pleased  to  state  that  the 
Commission  has  acted  promptly  and 
candidly  in  making  information  avail- 
aljle  about  this  unfortunate  accident. 

Ralph  E.  Lapp 
Alexandria,  Va. 


Neiv  Look  in  Comedy 

If)  TiiK  Editors: 

"The  Anierifan  Negro's  N<vv  Ojincdy 
Ad"  by  Louis  V..  Lomax  [fuiH  |  is  one  ol 
the  finest  "textbooks"  a  second, uv  silmol 


can  hope  to  locate.  Such  an  article  is 
particularly  useful  to.  me  in  teaching 
the  second-year  American  literature 
course  in  which  we  attempt  to  present 
Huck  Finn  and  Saroyan's  The  Human 
Comedy  as  examples  of  American 
humor.  .  .  . 

Barbara  Keith  Gelehrter 

Thayer  Academy 

Braintree,  Mass. 


'^^Dear  Senator'  Dilemma 

To  THE  Editors: 

I  thoroughly  enjoyed  Ellen  Davis' 
article  "Don't  Write  Your  Congressman, 
Unless  .  .  ."  [Easy  Chair,  June]— so  many 
good  and  constructive  points  made  with 
a  sense  of  humor  and  perspective.  Here's 
hoping  my  constituents  find  it  enlight- 
ening! 

Hubert  H.  Humphrey 

Member  of  the  Senate,  Minnesota 

Washington,  D.  C. 

I  do  not  doubt  the  truth  of  Ellen 
Davis'  article.  It  is  deplorable  that  so 
much  of  our  tax  money  goes  into  attend- 
ing to  the  enormous  quantity  of  mail 
sent  to  our  Washington  representatives. 
.  .  .  But  there  is  merit  in  a  shcjrt  letter 
to  the  point  from  an  informed  con- 
stituent. 

The  Friends  Committee  on  National 
Legislation,  245  2nd  Street,  Washington 
2.  D.  C,  gets  out  a  Washington  News- 
letter which  gives  one  accurate  informa- 
tion about  measures  to  be  brought  up 
in  Congress  or  legislation  concerning 
them.  By  subscribing  at  S3  a  year,  one 
can  keep  informed  and  write  a  short 
communication  about  ihe  questions  on 
which  one  feels  strongly.  I  have  liad  my 
Representatives  tell  me  that  they  value 
this  sort  of  rapport  and  surely  it  is  the 
duty  of  the  interested  citizen  to  speak 
out. 

Helen  S.  Eaton 
Duxbury,  Mass. 

I  found  myself  in  accord  with  prac- 
tically every  point  Ellen  Davis  made. 
I  am  not  sure,  however,  that  the  way  to 
remedy  the  situation  is  to  admonish 
"Don't  Write.  .  .  ."  Although  most  of  the 
letters  written  to  the  Congressman  aren't 
read  by  him,  they  are  read  by  someone 
on  his  staff  [who]  in  turn,  talks  to 
[hiui].  It  is  possible  to  inHuence  the 
Congressman  through  persuading  a  staff 
member,  so  it  would  be  a  shame  to  stop 
writing  the  Congressman  just  because  he 
can't  read  each  letter  personally. 

In  fact,  sometimes  there  are  not 
enough  letters.  We,  too,  go  to  Capitol 
Hill  and  our  ex|)erience  has  been  that 
there  is  a  great  deal  of  mail  on  the  so- 
called  'pockctl)C)ok"  issues,  i)ut  on  other 
legislation   which  may  have  just  as  im- 


portant an  effect  there  seems  to  be  no 
constituency.  Often  staff  members— or 
even  the  Congressmen  themselves— will 
say  to  us,  "We  are  hearing  only  from 
the  people  who  feel  they  will  be  hurt  by 
this  legislation.  We  are  not  hearing 
from  anyone  who  is  talking  for  the 
public  interest.  If  we  vote  for  this  bill 
we  are  going  to  have  a  hard  time  justi- 
fying our  action  to  our  constituents  un- 
less we  get  some  mail." 

There  is  also  something  to  be  said  for 
the  sincere  letter  from  those  with  back- 
grounds less  impressive  than  that  of 
George  Kennan.  Writing  a  letter  has  an 
effect  on  the  writer  as  well  as  on  the 
person  who  receives  it.  Having  com- 
mitted himself  in  writing  he  feels  a  sort 
of  proprietary  interest  in  the  bill;  he 
watches  the  paper  to  see  how  the  legisla- 
tion is  faring;  he  adds  to  his  own  knowl- 
edge in  the  field  and  his  experience  with 
government.  If  he  gets  a  thoughtful  re- 
ply to  his  communication,  whether  it  is 
staff  written  or  not,  his  next  letter  may 
show  more  concern,  more  knowledge  of 
the  subject.  .  .  . 

I  hope  Mrs.  Davis'  article  will  be 
widely  read  and  lead  to  an  improved 
quality  of  correspondence  both  to  and 
from  Capitol  Hill. 

Mrs.  Robert  J.  Phillips,  Pres. 

League  of  Women  Voters  of  the  U.  S. 
Washington,  D.  C. 

Riesman  Clarified 

To  the  Editors: 

A  passage  in  my  article,  "Riesman  and 
His  Readers"  [June],  appears  to  have 
misinterpreted  his  views.  In  my  eager- 
ness to  abbreviate,  I  compressed  into  the 
final  paragraph  his  own  position  on 
reducing  Cold  War  tensions  together 
with  that  of  his  few  colleagues  who 
espouse  unilateral  disarmament.  He 
himself  does  not,  as  I  should  have  made 
clear.  In  an  article  written  with  Michael 
Maccoby  for  The  New  Left  Review,  he 
distinguishes  unilateral  initiatives— such 
as  dismantling  a  base,  or  limiting  the 
rearmament  of  Western  Germany— from 
unilateral  disarmament,  which  he  does 
not  believe  to  be  within  the  range  of 
possibility  for  the  United  States. 

Eric  Larrabee 
New  York  N.Y. 


i 

i 


Proving  Twain 

To  the  Editors: 

".A  Boston  Ciirl,"  which  appears  in 
your  (une  issue  as  "For  the  first  time 
published  under  the  byline  of  Mark 
Twain,"  was  iciciiiificci  moic  iliaii  three 
years  ago  by  Robert  J.  Lowenhcrz  of 
New  York  University  and  was  leprintccl 
in    American    Speech     (Fcbruaiy     iy.'J8) 


8  times  more 

rural  electric 

power  needed 

by  1985 


During  the  short  twenty-five  years  they've 
had  electric  power,  consumer-owners  of  rural 
electric  systems  have  been  increasing  their 
use  of  electricity  100%  every  six  years. 

Independent  studies  show  an  ever-increasing 
demand  for  rural  electric  power.  The  desire 
for  modern  conveniences  in  the  home,  cou- 
pled with  farm  and  rural  industry  needs  for 
electricity,  will  multiply  present  rural  electric 
power  consumption  8  times  more  by  1985. 

America's  Rural  Electric  Systems,  financed 
by  Rural  Electrification  Admin- 
istration loans,  are  working  now 
to  meet  these  future  rural  power 


250 


240 


220 


200 


180 


g  160 

O 

K 

E- 

i  140 

O 
.-I 


O  120 
to 

2 

o 

ri  100 
n 


80 


60 


40 


i 

RURAL   ELECTRIC 
POWER   SITUATION 

J 

1 

; 

f 

i 

« 

li 

11 

mi 

i 

In 

A 

am 

.<^ 

0 

W     \         \          \          \ 
r                  RURAL 

POWER  NEEDS 

1            1            1 

—  .r^-C 

co^ 

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20 


35      40       45        50        55        60       65       70       75       80     85 

Source:  NRECA,  Washington,  D.C. 

requirements — installing  bigger  poles,  larger 
wires,  heavier  transformers.  This  requires 
adding  annual  investments  of  8  to  12  per  cent 
of  the  original  value  of  each  system — dou- 
bling the  investment  in  just  ten  years. 

Long-range,  low-cost  financing  is  necessary 
for  rural  electrics  to  properly  serve  their 
sparsely  settled  areas.  They'll  continue  to  sup- 
ply these  areas — all  consumers,  large  or  small, 
near  or  far — with  electricity  at  the  lowest  pos- 
sible cost.  And  rural  electrics  will  repay  every 
cent  of  their  REA  loans,  with  interest.  Already 
they  have  repaid  nearly  $l'/2  billion  in  prin- 
cipal and  interest  on  their  $3'/2  billion  loans. 


NRECA 


AMERICA'S     RURAL     ELECTRIC     SYSTEMS 


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LETTERS 

under  the  title  "Mark  Twain  on  Usage." 
As  proof  of  Mark  Twain's  authorship, 
Charles  Neider  at  the  end  of  your  re- 
printing cites  the  article's  general  style 
and  its  inclusion  of  an  incident  which 
recurs  in  the  Autobiography;  further 
proof  was  discovered  by  Mr.  Lowenher/ 
in  an  unpublished  letter  dated  April  ■<(), 
1890,  from  Howells  to  Mark  Twain 
which  refers  to  the  article. 

Allan  F.  Hubbf.i.i. 

Editorial  Board,  American  Speech^ 

New  York,  N. 

Mr.  Neider  Replies: 

Frederick  Anderson,  assistant  editor  ol 
the  Mark  Twain  papers  at  Berkeley,  wh( 
brought  the  item  to  my  attention,  als< 
"identified"  it  as  Twain's,  but  did  noj 
feel  he  had  proof.  My  discovery  of  th( 
internal  evidence  clinched  the  author-i 
ship.  1  bow  to  Mr.  Lowenherz's  prioi 
publication,  though  American  Speed 
Ibit  out  56  of  a  total  of  245  lines 
omitting  precisely  the  nub  of  the  inl 
ternal  proof— the  incident  of  the  circuh 
driveway— and  relegated  the  piece  tl 
"Miscellany"  in  the  back. 

Mr.  Lowenherz's  "proof"  rested  on 
letter  of  Howells'  to  Twain,  which  MrJ 
Lowenherz  dated  April  30,   1890.    Thii 
may   be   a   misprint;    to   my   knowledge 
there  is  no  such  letter.    Presumably, 
was  referring   to   a   letter   of  April   31 
1880,  which  begins:  "I  want  to  put  tl 
Conversation  into  the  next  number,  aril 
so  I  suppose  you  can't  simultane.    I  r( 
turn  the  letter,  and  a  proof  of  a  Club." 
The    editors    of     the    definitive    Afarj 
Twain-Howells  Letters   suggest   this   rt 
ferred    to    another    piece— on    obituai 
eloquence, 

Charles  Neidi 
New  York,  N. 


Spitting  Image^ 

To  the  Editors: 

Concerning  Burt  Goldblatt's  cover  o 
the  June  issue,  my  wife  and  I  have  a 
serious  bet  of  fifty  smackers.  I  say  it 
an  infrared  photo  of  the  Battery  in  N 
York  City.  She  says  it  is  an  X-ray  of  the 
coronary  network  of  a  bull  moose  altei 
a  massive  thrombosis.  Please  settle  thi 
argument. 

Henry  L.  Footi 
San  Jose,  Calif 

An  Editor's  Answer: 

I  guess  you'll  have  to  pay  up.  Th 
])ull  moose  your  observant  wife  ha 
identified  is  called  (or  will  l)e)  Lincoli 
Center  for  the  Performing  Arts.  Thi 
however,  is  not  its  coronary  network.  1 
has  no  heart,  nor,  1  d()ul)t,  ever  wi 
have. 

Ri  SSI  I  I.  I.VM 
New  \  Oik,  N.  ' 


.. 


JOHN    FISCHER 


the  editor^s 

EASY  CHAIR 


Yugoslavia's  Flirtation  with 
Free  Enterprise 

Part  II  of  a  Puzzled  Report 
on  an  Ex-Satellite 

IN  BELGRADE  a  few  weeks  ago  the  finan- 
cial director  of  a  tobacco  factory  told  me  why 
he  was  so  desperately  eager  to  get  to  the  United 
States. 

"I  want  to  learn  how  you  Americans  sell  ciga- 
rettes," he  said,  "and  I  need  to  learn  fast.  Ten 
years  ago,  selling  was  no  problem  in  Yugoslavia. 
All  the  business  was  handled  by  a  state  mo- 
nopoly, which  had  a  hard  time  turning  out 
enough  cigarettes  to  supply  the  stores— and  not 
very  good  cigarettes,  either. 

"Now  we  have  a  dozen  competing  tobacco  en- 
terprises, each  one  trying  to  put  out  better  brands 
in  more  attractive  packages.  I  am  advertising 
my  factory's  products  in  magazines  and  news- 
papers, on  radio  and  billboards.  We've  even 
tried  cutting  prices.  But  unsold  cigarettes  are 
still  piling  up  in  our  warehouse.  So  I  have  to 
find  out  all  I  can  about  American  distribution 
methods  right  away." 

This  man  thinks  he  is  a  good  Communist.  Yet 
Marxist  theory  offers  him  no  help  with  his  man- 
agement problems— problems  which  would  sound 
as  familiar  as  "Sweet  Adeline"  to  any  American 
executive. 

•  In  Titograd— a  brand-new  city  slowly  rising  at 
the  foot  of  the  most  desolate  mountain  range 
in  Europe— the  Reclame  Advertising  Agency  is 
trying  to  introduce  Madison  Avenue  to  Mon- 
tenegro. It  is  a  private  (and  apparently  prosper- 
ous) venture,  turning  out  signs,  publicity  releases, 
layouts,  and  copy  for  all  comers. 

•  Another  small  businessman— an  iron  molder 
who  makes  castings  for  garages  and  factories— 


recently  paid  a  fine  of  three  million  dinars  for 
fudging  on  his  income  tax.  Apparently  it  caused 
him  little  pain,  since  he  keeps  a  handsome  villa 
in  Belgrade,  another  on  the  Dalmatian  coast,  a 
pair  of  gardeners  at  each  place,  and  two  limou- 
sines. 

•  One  Sunday  morning  I  strolled  past  a  Zagreb 
apartment  house  with  an  unusually  thick  cluster 
of  TV  aerials  on  its  roof. 

"A  lot  of  doctors  live  there,"  my  companion 
explained.  "They  are  always  rich.  In  your  coun- 
try too,  I  think?" 

For  a  supposedly  Communist  country,  Yugo- 
slavia produces  a  surprising  number  of  "rich" 
people— not  big  rich  in  Texas  terms,  but  com- 
fortably well  off  by  normal  standards.*  Among 
those  I  got  to  know  are  an  architect,  a  free-lance 

*  By  far  the  richest,  in  terms  of  real  income,  is  Tito. 
The  splendor  of  his  way  of  life  makes  Onassis  look 
like  a  poor  boy— indeed,  it  outshines  any  royal  family 
left  in  Europe.  A  palace  or  villa  always  is  ready  for 
him  in  any  city  or  resort  he  might  want  to  visit.  I 
saw  only  five— those  in  Belgrade,  Zagreb,  Ljubljana, 
Lake  Bled,  and  Split— but  one  government  official 
told  me  that  he  thought  the  total  number  of  Tito's 
residences  was  forty-one.  Some  of  these,  he  added, 
may  now  have  been  converted  to  other  purposes, 
since  the  old  gentleman  no  longer  travels  as  much  as 
he  once  did. 

When  he  goes  abroad— he  likes  to  spend  his  winters 
in  warm,  neutral  countries;  Southeast  Asia  last  year, 
Africa  this,  Latin  America  next— his  yacht  is  accom- 
panied by  most  of  the  Yugoslav  navy.  His  uniforms 
are  the  most  refulgent  since  Goering's.  (According  to 
his  friend  and  biographer.  Sir  Fitzroy  Maclean,  Tito 
always  was  a  snappy  dresser,  from  the  days  when  he 
was  a  metal  worker  in  a  machine  shop.  During  the 
years  while  he  was  an  underground  organizer  for  the 
Party,  he  posed  as  a  wealthy  engineer  and  escaped 
the  attentions  of  the  police  by  staying  at  the  best 
hotels.  His  first  big  money— the  fee  paid  by  Moscow 
for  his  translation  of  the  official  Communist  party 
history  into  Serbo-Croatian— he  spent,  in  most  un- 
proletarian  fashion,  for  a  big  diamond  ring  which  he 
still  wears.) 

None  of  this  seems  to  cause  any  marked  resentment 
among  the  Yugoslavs.  For  example,  a  man  who  bit- 
terly criticized  Premier  Kardelj  for  driving  a  Mer- 
cedes, a  moment  later  spoke  with  pride  about  Tito's 
three  Rolls-Royces  and  his  1961  Cadillac.  Even 
people  who  are  hostile  to  the  Communist  party  and 
the  government  are  likely  to  refer  to  Tito  reverently 
and  affectionately. 

This  is  not,  I  think,  merely  a  "cult  of  personality"— 
although  Tito's  portrait  did  adorn  every  office  and 
schoolroom  that  I  saw,  and  the  front  page  of  nearly 
every  paper  is  largely  devoted  to  chronicling  his  move- 
ments and  sayings.  Because  he  liberated  the  country 
from  both  the  Nazis  and  the  Russians,  and  then 
unified  it  in  an  unexpectedly  successful  federation, 
his  people  seem  quite  willing  to  accord  him  a  unique 
status— combining  the  roles  of  Joan  of  Arc,  George 
Washington,  and  a  Byzantine  monarch.  And  they  are 
still  Balkan  enough  to  enjoy,  vicariously,  his  own 
taste  for  panache  and  finery. 


12 


THE     EDITOR'S     EASY     CHAIR 


'"Vile  Concoction" 

On  June  13  the  Literary  Gazette  of  Moscow 
published  a  two-column  article  about  Harper's 
special  supplement,  "The  Mood  of  the  Russian 
People,"  published  in  May.  Among  the  epithets 
used  to  describe  the  editors,  our  contributors. 
and  their  Soviet  sources  were:  "spiritual  and 
physical  trash"  and  "the  morose  outpourings" 
of  "contemptible  whiners."  The  article  winds 
up  with  a  reference  to  a  Russian  folk  tale 
about  a  rooster  Avho  found  a  pearl  in  a  pile  of 
manure.  Harper's,  however,  "has  attempted  in 
vain  to  emulate  the  winged  rooster.  Soiling 
itself  with  the  manure  of  petty  gossip,  it  has 
found  only  some  mournful  Avorms,  afraid  of  the 
daylight,  with  which  from  time  to  time  one  can 
get  a  nilible  from  an  undiscriminating  fish  in 
the  fetid  pool  of  the  'Cold  War.'  " 

The  Editors 


scientist,  and  a  woman  sculptor.  (Yugoslavs  love 
monuments  and  pay  well  for  them  Their  best 
known  sculptor,  Mestrovic,  long  resident  in 
America,  is  a  national  hero.) 

The  scientist  had  joined  with  six  friends  a  few 
years  ago  to  start  a  research  institute.  Today  it 
employs  some  two  hundred  people,  and  the  man- 
agers can  fix  salaries  (including  their  own)  as 
high  as  they  like.  Moreover,  they  can  divide  up 
85  per  cent  of  the  enterprise's  earnings  as  they 
see  fit— for  bonuses,  new  equipment,  or  promo- 
tion expenses.  My  friend's  chief  complaint  is  that 
he  can  no  longer  do  as  much  scientific  work  as 
he  would  like,  because  he  now  spends  most  of  his 
time  on  the  road,  drumming  up  contracts  for 
new  industrial-research  projects.  In  all  essentials, 
so  far  as  I  could  see,  his  business  operates  much 
like  similar  firms  in  the  United  States. 
•  A  paper  mill  is  making  so  much  money  that  it 
has  built  three  Olympic-size  swimming  pools  for 
its  staff— all  within  a  stone's  throw  of  the  Sava 
River,  where  the  employees  used  to  swim  hap- 
pily enough  in  humbler  days. 

Meanwhile  newspapers  and  publishing  houses 
complain  that  paper  prices  are  too  high.  They 
can't  produce  really  low-priced  books,  magazines, 
and  newspapers— with  the  result  that  even  the 
Party's  propaganda  programs  arc  hamstrung.  Yet 
nobody  in  Yugoslavia,  induding  Tilo  himself, 
feels  able  to  order  the  mill  to  cut  its  prices.  All 
the  government  can  do,  under  its  pecidiai  con- 
cept of  its  role,  is  to  bring  indired  market  pres- 
sures to  bear.  So  it  is  now  threatening  to  lower 
paper  tariffs  or  maybe  lo  finance  the  building  of 
a  cf)mpeting  factory. 

These  cases  indicate  how  lar  Yugoslavia  has 
moved  from  ortliodox  Marxism  since  it  broke 
away  from  the  Soviet  camp  in    !!)1H.    It   is  now 


trying,  with  considerable  success,  to  devise  an 
entirely  new  kind  of  economic  system,  quite  dif- 
ferent from  anything  you  will  find  either  in 
America  or  in  Russia. 

This  system  has  not  yet  taken  final  shape.  A 
group  of  able  young  economists  and  adminis- 
trators—many of  them  with  some  experience  in 
the  United  States— are  tinkering  with  it  con- 
stantly. They  are  surprisingly  unhampered  by 
Marxist  ideology,  and  they  aren't  afraid  to  admit 
mistakes;  if  one  experiment  doesn't  work,  they 
are  quick  to  try  another.  Unlike  the  Chinese  and 
the  Russians,  they  do  not  cling  stubbornly  to  an 
unworkable  scheme  simply  because  it  is  pre- 
scribed in  the  Holy  Writ  of  St.  Marx  and  St. 
Lenin. 

What  will  finally  emerge,  I  suspect,  -will  be  a 
tmique  blend  of  capitalist  and  socialist  notions— 
a  mixed  economy  with  a  good  deal  of  public 
ownership  (at  least  in  theory)  but  depending 
heavily  on  free  markets,  competition,  the  profit 
motive,  individual  enterprise  and  a  growing  flow 
of  trade  with  the  West.  In  some  ways  it  may 
even  turn  out  to  be  less  "socialistic"  than  the 
different  sort  of  mixed  economy  which  we  are 
developing.  Farming,  for  example,  is  now-  less 
subject  to  government  controls  in  Yugoslavia 
than  in  America. 

If  this  Yugoslav  invention  works,  it  may  prove 
an  attractive  pattern  for  many  of  the  underde- 
veloped countries  of  Asia,  Africa,  and  Latin 
America. 

After  all,  they  resemble  Yugoslavia  much  more 
closely  than  they  do  either  Russia  or  the  United 
States— in  size,  in  resources,  in  the  nature  of  their 
problems,  and  in  their  stage  of  political  develop- 
ment. Most  of  them  are  poor  soil  for  democracy* 
—a  delicate  and  exotic  plant,  which  seems  to 
flourish  only  under  quite  special  circumstances. 
A  glance  at  history  indicates  that  stable  demo- 
cratic societies  have  stirvived  for  any  considerable 
time  only  when  they  have  had:  (1)  an  Anglo- 
Saxon  political  tradition;  (2)  a  strong  infusion 
of  Protestantism,  with  its  toleration  of  phnalism; 

(3)  fairly  high  standards  of  living  and  education; 

(4)  a  strategic  situation  which  made  large  stand- 
ing armies  tinnecessary— usually  because  the  bor- 
ders were  protected  by  seas,  mountains,  or  other 
physical  barriers.  In  the  Latin,  Catholic  coun- 
tries—Spain, Italy,  France,  and  South  America- 
democracy  so  far  has  taken  only  precarious  root. 
And  the  new  countries  which  emeiged  from  the 
two  world  wars  mostly  started  out  with  demo- 
cratic forms,  but  replaced  them  fairly  quickly 
with  some  kind  of  authoritarian  government— as 
we  have  seen  in  Turkey,  Egypt,  Pakistan,  Korea, 
Iraq,  and  Ghana,  to  mention  only  a  few. 

*  An  extraordinary  article  by  1  Ispcth  HuxUy  in 
ilic  June  issue  of  Enrninilcr  explains  how  unsuitaljle 
—how  unthinkable— democracy  seems  lo  millions  of 
Africans. 


Moreover,  an  authoritarian  gov- 
ernment of  one  sort  or  another  seems 
almost  indispensable  to  most  of  the 
underdeveloped  countries.  It  offers 
the  only  quick  road  to  their  primary 
goal:  industrialization.  That  de- 
mands rapid  accumulation  of  capital. 
Although  foreign  aid  can  provide  a 
small  fraction,  most  of  this  capital 
has  to  come  from  local  savings.  And 
in  a  poor  country  there  won't  be  any 
savings  to  amount  to  anything,  unless 
they  are  forced— by  a  government 
strong  enough  (and  free  enough 
from  democratic  pressures)  to  hold 
down  consumption  and  channel  a 
large  share  of  the  nation's  output 
into  capital  goods. 

IT  seems  likely,  therefore,  that  au- 
thoritarian governments  will  become 
the  established  pattern,  for  at  least 
a  few  generations,  throughout  much 
of  the  world.  Often  there  may  not 
be  much  we  can  do  to  prevent  it. 
(As  we  could  not  prevent  it  in  Korea 
recently  for  all  the  men  and  money 
we  have  invested  there.) 

But  we  may  be  able  in  some  cases 
to  influence  a  country  toward  the 
kind  of  authoritarianism  which  is 
least  harmful.  A  country  bossed  by 
an  Ayub  or  a  Bourguiba  is  plainly 
better  off  than  one  bossed  by  a 
Trujillo  or  a  Nasser;  a  Tito  is  in- 
finitely preferable  to  a  Castro.  In- 
deed, any  independent  state,  however 
authoritarian,  is  more  hopeful  than 
a  satellite  of  Russia  or  China— if  only 
because  it  has  a  chance  to  evolve 
someday  toward  a  greater  degree  of 
freedom. 

In  some  parts  of  the  world,  the 
Yugoslav  model  may  prove  the  most 
practical  alternative  to  the  Soviet 
system.  Both  are  labeled  "socialist" 
—and,  reluctant  as  we  may  be  to 
admit  it,  "socialism"  has  become  a 
good  word  (and  "capitalism"  a  bad 
one)  to  the  ears  of  millions  of  people 
in  the  more  primitive  underde- 
veloped countries.  The  historic  rea- 
sons for  this  include  the  association 
of  "capitalism"  with  colonialism, 
throughout  Asia  and  Africa,  plus 
forty  years  of  Marxist  indoctrina- 
tion, aimed  especially  at  the  young 
politicians  and  intellectuals  of  these 
areas.  Consequently,  the  Yugoslavs 
are  careful  to  describe  their  society 
as  "socialist,"  no  matter  how  much 
capitalist  practice  they  may  pour 
into    the    mixture.     They    know    it 


makes  their  product  more  salable  to 
hordes  of  potential  customers. 

It  might  be  sensible,  then,  for  us 
to  look  beyond  the  label  and  try  to 
analyze  what  actually  is  going  into 
the  bottle.  For  it  may  turn  out  to 
be  the  lesser  evil  in  those  lands 
where  our  possibilities  to  influence 
the  choice  are  limited— and  where 
the  choice  lies  not  between  socialism 
or  democratic  capitalism,  but  be- 
tween Russian  domination  and  an- 
other brand  of  socialism  not  quite  so 
distasteful. 

BEFORE  going  to  Yugoslavia,  I 
was  pretty  skeptical  about  its  "inde- 
pendence." Was  it  real?  If  so,  how 
long  could  it  last?  Until  recently  a 
Russian  satellite,  it  is  surrounded  on 
three  sides  by  Communist  states;  its 
foreign  policy  usually  looks  like  a 
pale  carbon  of  the  Kremlin's;  and 
periodically  Tito  reopens  his  on- 
and-off  flirtation  with  Khrushchev. 
So  it  should  surprise  no  one  if  he 
should  drift  back  one  of  these  days 
into  the  Soviet  harem.  Or  so  it 
seemed  to  me. 

Not  any  longer.  Anybody  who 
takes  a  careful,  firsthand  look  will  be 
persuaded,  I  think,  that  in  fact  Yu- 
goslavia is  drifting  the  other  way  .  .  . 
that  it  probably  has  already  passed 
the  Point  of  No  Return  .  .  .  and  that 
nothing  short  of  a  military  conquest 
is  now  likely  to  bring  it  back  into 
the  Russian  camp.  Some  reasons  for 
this  view  were  mentioned  here  last 
month— but  the  main  reason  is  the 
peculiar  way  in  which  the  Yugoslavs 
are  shaping  their  economy. 

During  the  four  years  when  Yugo- 
slavia was  a  satellite,  from  1944  to 
1948,  it  got  a  bellyful  of  Soviet-style 
economics.  Stalin  tried  to  impose 
his  kind  of  Marxism,  in  its  most 
rigid  and  ruthless  form— and  the  re- 
sults were  disastrous. 

When  the  peasants  were  forced 
into  collective  farms,  they  went  on  a 
sit-down  strike  and  the  country 
nearly  starved  to  death.  When  the 
local  planners  sketched  out  blue- 
prints for  a  new  industry,  Stalin  said 
"No";  his  plan  was  to  keep  Yugo- 
slavia as  a  colony,  producing  raw 
materials  for  Russian  factories. 
When  a  Serb  or  Croat  plant  man- 
ager came  up  with  a  bright  idea,  his 
Russian  advisers  told  him,  contemp- 
tuously, to  forget  it;  they  would  do 
the  thinking,  and  they  meant  to  do 


JVit  consists  in  knowing  the 
resemblance  of  things  which 
differ,  and  the  difference  of 
things  which  are  alike. 
Madame  de  Stael's  definition  of 
wit  might  also  serve  as  a  defini- 
tion of  successful  investing,  which 
is  essentially  a  selective  art. 

For  obviously,  all  stocks  in  a 
particular  industry  have  some  char- 
acteristics in  common — yet  they 
may  go  their  separate  ways  in  the 
market.  And  conversely,  stocks  in 
industries  that  appear  to  be  unre- 
lated may  tend  to  move  together 
because  of  some  unseen  basic  com- 
mon denominator,  as  with  auto- 
mobile manufacturing  and  rubber. 
Successful  investing  is  a  matter  of 
making  correct  distinctions  when 
faced  with  choices. 

Not  everyone,  of  course,  is 
gifted  with  wit,  which  is  probably 
inborn.  Nor  is  everyone  able  to 
make  the  necessary  distinctions 
for  success  in  the  stock  market. 
But  we  have  wide  experience  and 
deep  knowledge  of  the  market 
and  its  behavior,  and  both  are  at 
your  disposal. 

We  maintain  a  sizable  Research 
Department  staffed  by  people  who 
make  it  their  business  to  discover 
the  distinctions  that  may  mean 
the  difference  between  profit  and 
loss.  Their  services  are  yours  to 
command,  without  charge  or  obli- 
gation, whether  you  want  infor- 
mation about  a  specific  company 
or  industry,  a  review  of  your  pres- 
ent holdings,  or  suggestions  for 
the  investment  of  any  sum  of 
money,  large  or  small,  that  you 
have  available. 

Just  write  to  Research,  outlin- 
ing your  situation,  and  allow  time 
for  a  well-considered  reply. 

MERRILL   LYNCH, 

PIERCE, 
FENNER   &   SMITH 

IN    CORPORATED 

Members  New  York  Stock  Exchange 
70  PINE  STREET,  NEW  YORK  S,  N.  Y. 

LONDON 110  Fenchurch  Street 

PARIS 7  Rue  de  la  Paix 

143  offices  in  U.  S.,  Canada,  and  abroad 


14 


THE     EDITOR'S     EASY     CHAIR 


it  strictly  according  to  Tlie  Book. 

A  people  as  touchy  and  proud  as 
the  Yugoslavs  were  bound  to  rebel 
against  this  sort  of  thing.  And  they 
—unlike  the  Hungarians  and  East 
Germans— were  able  to  make  their 
rebellion  stick  because  they  had  not 
been  "liberated"  by  the  Red  Army 
at  the  end  of  World  "War  II.  They 
had  liberated  themselves;  conse- 
quently the  Kremlin  never  did  get 
complete  control  of  the  Yugoslav 
army,  the  police,  or  the  Party  ma- 
chinery.* 

Immediately  after  Tito's  Declara- 
tion of  Independence— in  an  eight- 
hour  speech  on  Jidy  21,  1948— the 
Yugoslavs  began  to  dismantle  the 
Russian-designed  economic  system. 

Their  first  necessity  was  to  open 
up  trade  with  the  West.  Until  then 
they  had  depended  on  Russia  and  its 
satellites  for  most  of  their  imports, 
and  these  were  of  course  cut  off  at 
once     by     the     Kremlin     blockade. 

*  When  the  break  came,  only  one 
general  and  two  members  of  the  Poh't- 
buro  tried  to  desert  Tito  for  Stalin,  and 
they  were  easily  disposed  of.  Among  the 
rank  and  file  of  the  Yugoslav  Communist 
party,  however,  the  Kremlin's  influence 
apparently  ran  deeper.  I  was  told  that 
60,000  Stalinists  were  locked  up  in  con- 
centration camps  in  1948,  and  that  some 
of  them  stayed  there  for  six  years. 

Although  it  is  obviously  impossible  to 
be  sure,  I  am  inclined  to  believe  the  of- 
ficial statement  that  today  there  are  no 
concentration  camps,  and  relatively  few 
political  prisoners.  At  least  there  is  some 
independent  non-Yugoslav  testimony  to 
support  that  claim;  and  ordinary  citizens 
certainly  are  far  less  fearful  of  the  secret 
police  than  they  are  in  Russia  and  its 
satellites.  The  most  convincing  evidence 
is  the  freedom  with  which  they  talk  to 
foreigners,  and  the  complete  lack  of 
restrictions  on  the  movements  of  foreign 
visitors. 

Although  there  is  no  police  terror  to- 
day, the  police  apparatus  still  exists— 
and  it  still  seems  to  be  heartily  disliked. 
When  the  government  arranged  a 
"spontaneous  demonstration"  to  protest 
the  assassination  of  I-umumba,  the 
crowd  got  out  of  hand,  sacked  the  Bel- 
gian embassy,  broke  a  lot  of  store 
windows— and  sent  fifty-two  policemen 
to  the  hospital.  What  the  government 
had  meant  to  be  a  nonviolent  demon- 
stration against  the  lielgians  and  the 
UN  turned  into  a  violent  demonstration 
against  the  jK>lice  who  were  supp<jsed 
to  shepherd  the  parade.  These  facts 
were  never  published  in  Yugoslavia— 
nor,  as  far  as  1  can  learn,  anywhere  else. 


Only  because  England  and  America 
stepped  in  promptly  with  loans  and 
trade  deals  was  Tito  able  to  keep  his 
country  afloat. 

The  next  step  was  to  scrap  most  of 
the  collective  farms.  Today  92  per 
cent  of  the  land  is  again  owned  and 
worked  by  individual  peasants— with 
the  restdt  that  the  country  has  once 
more  become  nearly  self-sufficient  in 
food.  (By  American  standards,  Yu- 
goslav agriculture  is  still  inefficient, 
because  the  peasants'  farms  are  too 
small;  the  biggest  is  only  25  acres. 
Eventually  the  planners  hope  to 
create  enough  factory  jobs  to  siphon 
a  lot  of  surplus  manpower  off  the 
land,  so  that  little  plots  can  be 
merged  into  economic  units.  Never- 
theless, even  the  present  arrangement 
works  far  better  than  Russia's;  as 
this  is  written,  Khrushchev  has  just 
proclaimed  another  crisis  in  Soviet 
agricidttire— the  fourth  since  he  came 
to  power.) 

Most  scandalous  of  all,  from  the 
Russian  j)oint  of  view,  was  the  way 
the  Yugoslavs  began  to  edge  back 
toward  competition,  free  markets, 
and  the  profit  motive.  They  are 
moving  along  two  paths: 

/.  Private  enterprise 

IVIost  small  businesses— restatirants, 
taxis,  repair  sliops,  jDroduce  markets, 
the  service  trades— are  now  run  by 
individual  entrepreneurs.  Any  Yugo- 
slav is  free  to  go  into  business  for 
himself— so  long  as  he  does  not  hire 
tuore  than  five  employees.  Some  of 
them,  like  the  iron  molder  men- 
tioned earlier,  are  doing  almost  too 
well.  Beatity-shop  operators,  for  in- 
stance, are  reputed  to  be  the 
wealthiest  group  in  Belgrade;  and 
here,  as  elsewhere,  the  most  ruthless 
exploiters  of  the  working  class  (and 
everybody  else)  are  the  plumbers  and 
TV  repairmen. 

Much  of  the  housing  now  going 
up  is  also  privately  owned.  You  can 
build  your  own  home,  and  if  you  put 
up  a  two-family  house,  yoti  can  rent 
one  of  the  units.  Furthermore,  if 
you  own  a  vacation  place  at  the  sea- 
side or  in  the  mountains  (as  a  sur- 
j^rising  number  of  Yugoslavs  do), 
you  (an  rent  that  also— though  no 
landlord  is  permitted  to  rent  more 
than  three  units.  II  you  jirefcr  an 
apartment,  you  can  buy  one  in  a  co- 
operative, just  as  New  Yorkers  do. 
In    cither    case,    the    architect    and 


sometimes    the    contractor    will    be 
working  as  a  private  businessman. 

2.  Competing  corporations 

The  Yugoslavs  call  them  "enter- 
prises," but  in  most  respects  they 
operate  much  like  American  corpora- 
tions. Nominal  control  rests  with  a 
workers'  council,  representing  the 
employees,  just  as  nominal  control 
of  our  companies  rests  with  the 
shareholders;  in  both  cases,  however, 
management  is  largely  self-perpetu- 
ating. (I  did  come  across  a  few  cases 
in  which  the  workers'  council  had 
dismissed  an  incompetent  or  thie^- 
ing  manager— but  I  gathered  that 
this  happens  about  as  rarely  as  a 
successful  stockholders'  revolt  in  the 
United   States.) 

New  ones  start  up  all  the  time, 
wherever  somebody  sees  an  oppor- 
tunity to  make  a  fast  dinar.  Any 
three  jieople  can  join  together  to 
start  an  enterprise,  putting  up  part 
of  the  capital— usually  about  10  per 
cent— from  their  own  savings;  the 
rest  they  borrow  from  an  investment 
bank,  if  the}  can  persuade  r  tlje 
bankers  that  the  venture  looks  prom- 
ising. Sometimes  they  are  established 
by  a  trade  union,  or  a  group  of 
farmers  who  need  a  ntw  tractor,  or 
by  a  village  that  wants  a  new  indus- 
try. Occasionally  they  fail,  and  go 
out  of  business  or  get  taken  over  by 
a  bigger  enterprise. 

And  they  really  do  compete.  The 
most  noticeable  competition,  to  a 
foreign  visitor,  is  in  the  tourist- 
agency  business.  In  thfe  old  days,  all 
such  services  were  handled  by  Put- 
nik,  a  government  monopoly.  It  still 
suffers  a  hangover  from  the  chronic 
ills  of  a  monopoly— lethargy,  indif- 
ference, and  incompetence.  But  some 
of  its  young  competitors,  notably 
Tourist  Express,  are  as  alert  and 
efficient  as  Thomas  Cook's  or  the 
American  Express  Company.  One 
young  woman  executive  of  Tourist 
Express  told  me,  with  glee,  that  it  is 
snatching  away  more  of  Putnik's  i 
business  every  day.  (She  is  even  | 
nursing  a  plan  to  persuade  Pan  i 
American  to  go  into  partnership 
with  her  firm  to  build  a  chain  of 
modern  hotels  throughout  the  cotm- 
try.) 

Competition  in  all  fields  began  to 
speed  up  a  lew  months  ago,  when 
tlie  government  (with  the  help  of  a 
.'ii27.5-million  loan  fioiii  eight   West 


THE     EDITOR'S     EASY     CHAIR 


ern  countries,  including  America) 
made  its  currency  freely  convertible 
at  a  standard  rate  of  exchange- 
something  no  other  Communist 
country  has  ever  dared  to  try.  At 
the  same  time  controls  on  foreign 
trade  were  drastically  relaxed.  One 
immediate  result  was  a  sharp  rise  in 
pork  prices,  as  the  peasants  began  to 
ship  large  numbers  of  pigs  to  Aus- 
tria. Another  was  heavy  pressure  on 
some  industries— particularly  the  in- 
efficient old  monopolies,  which  now 
have  to  compete  with  cheaper  goods 
pouring  in  from  abroad.  When 
their  managers  screamed,  the  govern- 
ment told  them  grimly  that  the  soft 
days  are  over;  either  they  modernize, 
step  up  productivity,  and  cut  prices 
—or  go  out  of  business. 

WHAT  happens  to  "socialist  plan- 
ning" under  such  a  system? 

Quite  a  lot  has  happened  already. 
The  national  economic  plan  is  no 
longer  a  cast-iron  blueprint,  which 
tries  to  direct  the  use  of  every  ton 
of  steel  and  man-hour  of  labor.  Now 
it  is  little  more  than  a  pious  hope— 
a  fairly  loose,  general  statement  of 
economic  goals.  Decisions  have  been 
decentralized  so  far  that  Belgrade 
no  longer  attempts  a  detailed  day- 
by-day  control.  A  consequence  (as 
Americans  might  have  predicted)  is  a 
startling  upsurge  of  initiative  and 
energy  all  down  the  line. 

For  essential,  over-all  control,  the 
government  now  relies  mostly  on  the 
same  levers  as  we  do— fiscal  and 
monetary  policy,  taxes,  tariffs,  inter- 
est rates,  and  the  banking  system. 
There,  as  in  America,  the  flow  of  new 
capital  is  channeled  into  the  right 
places  primarily  by  the  investment 
banks. 

But  a  crucial  difference  between 
their  economy  and  ours  lies  just 
here.  Their  banks  are  arms  of  the 
government.  They  try  to  make  a 
profit  on  their  investments— indeed 
they  have  to,  since  they  pay  5  per 
cent  interest  to  their  depositors— 
but  they  also  try  to  invest  every 
dinar  where  it  will  help  most  to  de- 
velop the  country's  economy. 

As  a  result,  the  Yugoslavs  argue, 
they  use  their  resources  more  ration- 
ally than  we  do,  from  the  viewpoint 
of  the  national  interest.  They  like 
I  to  point  out  that  they  do  not  squan- 
der millions  on  a  yearly  change  of 
auto  models.    Neither  do  they  tear 


down  perfectly  sound  buildings  to 
put  up  sleazy  ones  in  their  place  .  .  . 
or  ruin  their  most  valuable  scenic 
assets  with  billboards  and  hot-dog 
stands  ...  or  pile  up  new  skyscrapers 
in  areas  already  congested  to  the 
point  of  strangulation.  They  grant 
that  they  have  learned  a  lot  from  us 
in  the  last  twelve  years;  but  they  hint 
(not  always  very  tactfully)  that  per- 
haps we  could  learn  something  from 
them  too. 

Maybe  they  have  a  point  here. 
But  in  fairness  it  should  be  noted 
that  even  their  kind  of  "socialist 
planning,"  managed  largely  through 
the  banking  system,  is  by  no  means 
infallible.  They  have  sometimes 
poured  money  into  football  stadiums 
and  fancy  fairgrounds  when  it  could 
have  been  used  more  sensibly  for 
new  housing.  They  too  have  built 
eyesores,  imeconomic  factories,  mis- 
placed housing  projects,  hotels  as 
tasteless  as  anything  in  Miami 
Beach.  And  at  the  moment  they  are 
seriously  worried  by  inflation. 

The  only  conclusions  I  would 
dare  to  venture,  on  such  brief  ac- 
quaintance, are: 

1.  For  their  particular  circum- 
stances—very different  from  ours— 
their  hybrid  economy  seems  to  work 
pretty  well.  It  has  produced  a  faster 
rate  of  growth  than  either  the  United 
States  or  Russia;  it  is  turning  out  a 
larger  proportion  of  consumers' 
goods  than  any  other  "socialist" 
country;  it  has,  so  far,  avoided  some 
of  the  worst  mistakes  of  both  capital- 
ism and  communism. 

2.  It  is  moving,  slowly  but  per- 
ceptibly, toward  the  West.  The  in- 
tegration this  spring  of  Yugoslavia's 
economy  into  the  Western  network 
of  international  trade  is  likely  to 
have  far-reaching  consequences.  So 
is  the  growing  reliance  on  economic 
decentralization  and  individual  in- 
itiative. 

3.  In  the  end,  these  consequences 
almost  surely  will  be  political  as  well 
as  economic.  For  economic  freedom 
tends  to  bring  political  freedom  in 
its  train.  Already  the  Yugoslav  Com- 
munist party  has  changed  into  some- 
thing a  Russian  couldn't  recognize. 
That  is  too  long  a  story  to  go  into 
here— but  my  hunch  is  that  the 
process  is  now  irreversible.  The 
genie  is  out;  nobody,  including  Tito, 
could  now  stuff  it  back  into  a  Soviet 
bottle. 


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AFTER  HOURS 


CULTURE-STRUCK    CANADA 


By  Russell  Lynes 


AF  E  W  hours  after  I  arrived  in 
Toronto  last  spring  I  got  into 
a  taxi  in  front  of  the  O'Keefe  Cen- 
tre, the  city's  brand-new  cultural 
market  basket,  and  asked  the  driver 
to  take  me  to  the  Canadian  Broad- 
casting Corporation's  Studio  6. 

"You  in  the  television  business?" 
he  asked  me.  He  was  a  young  man 
in  his  twenties. 

I  told  him  I  was  not,  that  I  was 
merely  going  to  appear  briefly  on  an 
interview  show,  "Seven-O-One." 

"^Vhat  do  you  think  of  Canadian 
television?"  he  said. 

I  admitted  that  I  had  never  seen 
any  Canadian  television,  though  I 
had  heard  that  it  was  good.  I  asked 
him  what  he  thought  of  it.  With  not 
the  slightest  hesitation  but  with  an 
after-taste  of  bile,  he  said:  "They 
keep  trying  to  hit  us  with  culture— 
and  they  won't  lay  off  it." 

There  is  almost  surely  a  lesson  in 
this  for  Mr.  Minow,  the  new  Federal 
Communications  Commission  chair- 
man, who  beats  American  television 
about  the  ears  with  such  gusto  for 
its  Tack  of  culture.  It  was  the  begin- 
ning of  a  cultural  lesson  for  me. 

My  reason  for  being  in  Toronto 
was  to  take  part  in  a  three-day  meet- 
ing of  the  Canadian  Conference  of 
the  Arts,  a  sort  of  Olyrn})ian  conven- 
tion held  on  the  slopes  of  Parnassus 
with  all  of  the  muses  in  attendarur 
in  (heir  best  flresscs  and  h;its.  Il  was 
Canada's  first  attempt  to  gafhci    in 


one  place  for  several  days  the  na- 
tion's leading  artists,  composers, 
writers,  theatrical  and  dance  folk, 
museum  directors,  and  others  di- 
rectly or  indirectly  in  positions  of 
consequence  in  the  artistic  and  cul- 
tural life  of  the  country.  There  were 
also  rectors  of  universities,  city  plan- 
ners, government  officials,  historians, 
clergymen,  art  collectors,  business- 
men, iuchitects,  and  those  ubiquitous 
handmaidens  of  the  arts  whom  I  like 
to  call  the  "culturettes." 

"If  the  roof  of  this  building  fell 
in,"  Mr.  Alan  Jarvis,  the  National 
Director  of  the  Conference  of  the 
Arts,  said  to  me,  "it  would  wipe  out 
the  arts  in  Canada.  Everybody,  al- 
most everybody,  who  has  anything  to 
do  with  the  arts  is  here." 

Canada  is  enjoying  (if  that  is  the 
correct  word,  and  it  seemed  to  be) 
a  well-publicized  and  enthusiasti- 
cally nurtured  "cultural  boom."  The 
boom  got  its  impetus,  I  was  told, 
from  the  establishment  in  1953  of 
the  Shakespeare  Festival  at  Stratford, 
Ontario,  a  venture  that  has  brought 
international  acclaim  to  the  Cana- 
dian arts,  and  has  drawn  thousands 
of  people  across  Canada's  borders  to 
see  one  of  the  liveliest  theatre  groups 
in  the  world.  Four  vcars  later,  in 
1957,  art  became  an  official  responsi- 
bility of  the  government  when  the 
Liberals,  who  were  then  in  power, 
put  up  ^H)0  minion  lo  establish  the 
Canada  (Council   lf)t    I  lie  purpose  f)f 


promoting  the  arts  and  of  encour- 
aging the  talented.  Half  of  this 
splendid  sum  came  from  the  death 
duties  levied  upon  the  estate  of  Sir 
James  Dunn,  the  overlord  of  a  coal 
and  steel  empire.  It  seemed  a  splen- 
did amount  at  the  time  but  of  course 
the  meager  $3  million  annual  budget 
of  the  Council  which  the  fund  makes 
possible  is  already  said  to  be  too 
little.  The  Council  is  asking  for  an- 
other $280,000  a  year  for  grants  and 
scholarships  for  artists.  The  arts,  ac- 
cording to  the  Council,  "are  begin- 
ning to  move  out  of  the  quadrangle 
and  into  the  market  place." 

There  was  certainly  a  sense  of 
bustle,  confidence,  and  enthusiasm  at 
the  O'Keefe  Centre.  The  battalions 
of  culture  were  out  in  full  panoply. 
No  one,  I  suppose,  knows  how  many 
people  turned  up  for  the  conference, 
but  six  thousand  general-admission 
tickets  were  sold  at  a  dollar  each  dur- 
ing the  three  days;  obviously  many 
of  the  buyers  were  repeaters.  There 
were  a  number  of  "distinguished 
guests"  (as  visitors  to  conferences  are 
always  called)  from  abroad,  most 
notably  Sir  Julian  Huxley  and  Jane 
Drew,  England's  most  "distin- 
guished" woman  architect;  Robert 
Whitehead,  the  Broadway  producer; 
Robert  Whitney,  the  director  of  the 
Louisville  Orchestra;  and  the  Ameri- 
can sculptor,  Isamu  Noguchi. 

But  the  guests  were  largely  orna- 
mental. The  reason  for  the  gather- 
ing, like  the  reason  for  most  conven- 
tions, was  to  provide  the  participants 
with  a  chance  to  parade  their  wares 
and  their  personalities,  to  get  to 
know  each  other,  and  to  talk,  talk, 
talk,  talk.  There  was  a  large  exhibi- 
tion of  paintings  and  sculpture  by 
Canadian  artists;  there  was  a  pro- 
gram of  recently  composed  Canadian 
symphonic  music  performed  by  the 
orchestra  of  the  Canadian  Broad- 
casting Corporation;  there  was  an 
evening  of  poetry  readings  by  Can- 
adian poets;  and  there  were  panel 
discussions  (which  the  program 
called  "commissions"  for  reasons  that 
were  obscure  even  to  the  people  who 
had  j)lanned  the  program)  on  the 
Visual  Arts,  the  Literary  Arts,  the 
Dramatic  Arts,  Music,  and,  of  course, 
that  catchall.  Arts  in  Society.  There 
was  something  for  everybody,  a 
(hance  to  be  seen  and  heard. 

The  O'Keefe  Centre  was  a  suitable 
|)la(e  for  a  ( on  vent  ion  concerned 
with  giving  the  arts  a  leg  up.    It  is 


1/ 


big,  new,  democratic,  luxurious,  and 
cost  $12  million  of  the  O'Keefe  Brew- 
ing Company's  money.  I  was  told 
I  hat,  since  there  are  legal  restrictions 
on  advertising  of  beer  in  the  prov- 
ince of  Ontario,  the  Centre  was  a 
publicity  gesture.  But  be  that  as  it 
may,  its  purpose,  according  to  its 
president,  is  to  "provide  Toronto 
with  a  multipurpose  entertainment 
center  capable  of  meeting  all  tastes 
with  the  best  facilities  available." 
One  Torontonian  described  it  to  me 
as  "a  cultural  rodeo."  Its  auditorium 
seats  3,200  people;  its  stage  is  almost 
the  size  of  a  small  hockey  rink;  its 
lobby  is  big  enough  to  hold  a  large 
exhibition  of  paintings  and  sculp- 
ture. Downstairs  there  is  a  lounge  in 
which  five  hundred  people  sat  down 
to  meals  and,  having  eaten  cold  meat 
and  potato  salad  (several  meals  run- 
ning) and  drunk  Canadian  wine, 
listened  to  speeches.  It  was  in  the 
O'Keefe  Centre  that  "Camelot" 
opened  its  out-of-town  trial  run. 
(The  first  performance  lasted  four 
hours,  and  one  critic  reported:  "It 
was  like  'Parsifal'  with  the  jokes  left 
out.")  The  night  on  which  the  CBC 
orchestra  performed  the  concert  of 
Canadian  music  was  the  first  time  a 
symphony  had  played  there.  A  spe- 
cial acoustical  "shell"  was  erected  on 
the  stage,  and  I  was  told  with  awe 
that  it  had  been  built  in  England 
and  weighed  twenty  tans. 

There  was  a  pleasant  air  of  carni- 
val about  the  convention.  Every 
time  the  chairman  of  any  one  of  the 
dozen  or  so  meetings  made  an  an- 
nouncement, he  always  concluded 
his  remarks  with  a  reference  to  the 
fact  that  the  bar  would  be  open. 
(Obviously  the  committee  was  count- 
ing on  the  thirst  of  the  participants 
to  help  meet  the  costs.)  People  milled 
about  with  glasses  in  their  hands 
discussing  the  state  of  culture;  men 
and  women  from  the  CBC  were  for- 
ever cornering  artists  and  writers  and 
recording  their  words  on  tape  for 
broadcast;  flash  bulbs  were  popping. 
A  few  bitter  arguments  enlivened  a 
few  of  the  "commissions"  but  most 
of  them  were  peaceable  talk-fests.  (I 
was  involved  in  the  Arts  in  Society 
panel,  which  devoted  its  attention 
to  the  problems  of  how  cities  have 
gone  to  the  dogs  and  what  might  be 
done  about  them.  We  concluded 
cheerfully  that  "It's  never  too  late.") 

So  many  people  turned  up  for  the 
poetry  reading  on  the  first  evening 


that  some  of  them  had  to  stand  on 
the  stairs  leading  down  to  the  room 
where  the  performance  took  place, 
and  some  didn't  get  in  at  all.  The 
director  of  the  conference  used  the 
star's  dressing-room  (occupied  the 
week  before  by  Sir  Laurence  Olivier) 
as  a  sort  of  office,  private  bar,  and 
meeting  place  for  the  "distinguished 
guests,"  one  of  whom  got  locked  in 
the  bathroom  and  had  to  be  extri- 
cated by  the  building  engineer. 

"Could  such  a  conference  as  this 
happen  in  the  States?"  a  number  of 
people  asked  me  a  number  of  times. 
I  said  that  I  thought  it  most  un- 
likely; there  would  be  little  chance 
to  get  so  many  people  in  responsible 
positions  in  so  many  of  the  arts  to- 
gether; we  are  too  big  and  our  arts 
are  too  segmented.  But  they  did  not 
ask  the  question  in  order  to  hear  my 
answer.  It  was  merely  their  way  to 
make  me  understand  that  the  situa- 
tion of  the  arts  in  Canada  is  very 
different  from  that  in  the  States. 

"You  sec,"  they  said,  and  the  fig- 
ures of  speech  kept  recurring,  "Can- 
ada is  strung  out  like  a  string  of 
beads  with  great  distances  between 
the  beads.  It's  a  ribbon  three  thou- 
sand miles  long  and  only  about  sixty 
miles  wide.  There  is  no  real  com- 
munication between  those  who  are 
doing  things  in  the  arts  in,  say,  Van- 
couver, and  those  in  Montreal. 
Our  problem  is  communication." 

IT  IS  true,  of  course,  that  if  you 
ask  anybody  these  days  what  he 
thinks  is  at  the  root  of  society's  trou- 
bles, he  is  likely  to  say  "failure  of 
communication."  (Do  you  remem- 
ber when  it  used  to  be  "failure  of 
distribution"?)  But  failure  of  com- 
munication in  the  arts  in  Canada  is 
not  just  that  Canadian  artists  don't 
talk  to  each  other;  they  talk  across 
the  border  to  the  south. 

"I  live  in  Vancouver,"  an  attrac- 
tive young  woman  composer  ex- 
plained to  me.  "I  belong  to  the  West 
Coast  much  more  than  I  belong  to 
Canada.  If  I'm  part  of  a  community 
of  artists,  it's  of  artists  in  Vancouver, 
Seattle,  Portland,  San  Francisco." 

It  was  obvious  that  one  of  the 
reasons  for  the  conference  was  to 
make  Canadian  artists  take  artistic 
Canada  seriously,  and  to  promote  a 
national  pride  in  the  national  prod- 
uct. Behind  this  was  what  seemed 
to  be  a  pervasive  concern  about  be- 
ing swallowed  up  artistically  as  well 


ta6tma 

JKem 
Puerto  c!/u€e 


Something's  happened 
to  change  your  thinking 
!  about  rum!  A  remarl<ab!e 
new  blending  process- 
taking  full  advantage 
of  our  great  reserves  of 
fine  rum-now  makes 
Ron  Merito  the  finest 
tasting  of  all  Puerto 
Rican  rums.  Try  today's 
Ron  Merito  at  home 
and  when  you  go  out. 

WHITE  and  GOLD  UBEL 


Merito 


w 


NATIONAL  OISTILIERS  PRODUCTS  CO..  N.  V.  •  8I^PR00; 


lO 


AJtitK.     riijujva 


as  financially  by  the  United  States. 
As  J.  B.  McGeachy  in  the  Financial 
Post  wrote  after  the  conference  was 
over,  the  visitors  from  abroad  "don't 
understand  that  the  story  of  Canada 
to  date  has  been  a  persevering  and 
also  fascinating  effort  to  create  here 
a  national  identity  distinct  from  that 
of  the  U.  S."  Since  national  bound- 
aries mean  almost  nothing  to  artists 
and  national  styles  have  all  but  dis- 
appeared from  the  arts  of  the  West- 
ern world,  distinct  national  artistic 
identity  is,  of  course,  almost  impossi- 
ble to  come  by.  Artists  are  not  in- 
terested in  it;  chambers  of  commerce 
are,  and  so  are  some  politicians,  pa- 
trons, and  promoters  of  the  national 
image.  There  is  no  reason  why  they 
shouldn't  be  but  it's  a  losing  fight. 
What  I  saw  in  the  exhibition  at  the 
O'Keefe  Centre  I  might  just  as  well 
have  seen  at  the  Chicago  Art  Insti- 
tute or  the  Museum  in  St.  Louis. 
Artists  know  that  Regionalism  has 
long  produced  dead  art,  and  is  dead 
as  an  aesthetic  issue. 

"One  of  our  problems  in  Can- 
ada .  .  ."  (I  began  to  think  that 
Canada  had  more  artistic  problems 
than  it  had  artists)  "is  that  our  cul- 
ture is  bilingual.  We  believe  in  it 
and  want  to  maintain  it,  but  it  isn't 
helped  by  the  fact  that  English  is 
abominably  taught  in  the  French 
schools  and  that  French  is  equally 
badly  taught  in  the  English  schools." 

Throughout  the  conference  when- 
ever there  was  a  formal  session,  as 
opposed  to  the  "commissions,"  there 
was  a  mixture  of  French  and  Eng- 
lish. When  Father  Georges-Henri 
Levesque,  the  Vice-Chairman  of  the 
Canada  Council  (of  the  arts),  spoke 
after  a  lunch,  he  started  in  mellif- 
luous French  and  then  after  a  few 
minutes  shifted  to  English  and  then 
every  few  paragraphs  or  so  switched 
back  and  forth.  He  discoursed  on 
the  importance  of  the  arts,  and  when 
he  made  his  utterances  in  French 
they  sounded  not  only  profound  but 
moving;  the  same  sentiments  when 
he  expressed  them  in  English  were 
flat  and  ridden  with  cliches.  Those 
who  introduced  the  speakers  from 
French  (^atuuia  trotted  out  their 
schoolboy  (or  more  frequently 
schoolgirl)  French  for  the  occasion. 
It  made  me  fee!  as  though  I  were 
JKick  in  (he  classroom  I)ut  the  audi- 
ence obviously  sufTcrccI  from  scll- 
conscicjusfiess  at  hearing  Frciu  h 
spoken  with  the  hesitancy  and   flat- 


ness with  which  most  of  them  obvi- 
ously spoke  it  themselves.  They 
laughed  uneasily  and  apologized  to 
me  for  their  compatriots. 

INDEED,  I  have  never  been 
apologized  to  so  much  in  so  few  days 
or  for  so  little  reason.  It  was  like 
Texas  without  the  twang— nationally 
proud  but  culturally  full  of  misgiv- 
ings, eager  to  be  part  of  the  world 
but  afraid  that  the  home-grown  prod- 
uct was  more  to  be  cherished  than 
esteemed.  Again  and  again  it  was 
impressed  on  me  that  Canada  thinks 
of  itself  as  a  "young"  nation,  and 
sometimes  scarcely  a  nation  at  all, 
but  a  suburb  of  the  United  States. 
"Do  you  see  any  reason  why  Canada 
shouldn't  be  part  of  the  United 
States?"  I  was  asked  more  than  once, 
and  when  I  said  I  didn't  see  any  rea- 
son why  it  should  be,  I  found  myself 
having  to  defend  the  benefits  of  va- 
riety against  the  benefits  of  bigness. 
But  this  question  was  asked  me  by 
artists  and  not  by  the  promoters  of 
the  arts.  (McGeachy  in  the  Finan- 
cial Post  said,  "Nobody  ever  asks  if 
the  Americans  want  us  as  members.") 
In  general  any  joke  made  at  the  ex- 
pense of  the  United  States  was  good 
not  only  for  a  laugh  but  for  applause. 
The  well  of  resentment  was  not  sur- 
prising but  its  depth  was  saddening. 
Canada  is  suffering  from  many  of 
the  same  kinds  of  growing  pains  that 
America  is,  but  to  theirs  is  added 
the  unease  of  knowing  that  much  of 
their  growth  is  fertilized  by  Ameri- 
can money  and  not  their  own. 
Canada's  standard  of  living  is  the 
second  highest  in  the  world;  its  cities 
are  sprawling,  just  as  ours  are,  in 
unplanned  and  unbeautiful  suburbs 
while  the  centers  of  cities  suffer  the 
common  North  American  blight. 
There,  as  here,  voices  are  raised  in 
protest  and  anguish,  but  I  had  the 
feeling  that  such  voices  are  more 
likely  to  be  heard  there  than  here. 
Canadians  have  already  built  model 
towns  and  discovered  that  it  is  pos- 
sible to  combine  idiosyncrasy  of  taste 
with  a  basically  sound  community 
[)lan.  It  far  from  satisfies  the  archi- 
tect's dream  of  "total  architecture" 
(and  a  good  thing  too)  but  it  gives 
heart  to  piaimers.  Toronto  has  re- 
captured an  island  in  Lake  Ontario 
from  honky-tonk,  lorn  down  the 
shacks  ih;it  scarred  its  shores,  lc)ri)id- 
den  aut(jnioi)iles  to  chive  on  it,  and 
turned  it  into  a  pleasant  place  for 


Torontonians  to  walk.  It  is  only  a 
gesture,  perhaps,  a  small  solace  for 
a  city  that  might  have  faced  a  beauti- 
ful lake,  and  preferred  to  turn  its 
back  on  it  long  ago;  but  it  is  a  ges- 
ture that  American  cities  can  envy. 

After  the  concert  of  music  by  Can- 
adian composers,  Philip  Torno,  the 
treasurer  of  the  conference  and  a  suc- 
cessful Canadian  wine  grower  and 
distributor,  asked  me,  "How  do  you 
think  we're  doing?" 

For  me  to  say,  "I  think  you're  do- 
ing fine,"  would  have  been  patroniz- 
ing. To  say  I  didn't  think  they  were 
doing  fine  would  have  been  both  un- 
true and  insulting.  Mr.  Torno  was, 
I  think,  puzzled  when  I  said,  "What 
do  you  mean,  'How  are  we  doing?' 
Why  'we'?  Why  not,  'How  are  the 
artists  doing?'  or,  'What  do  you  think 
of  the  music?'  "  But  he  meant,  of 
course,  "How  is  Canada  doing?"  and 
this,  I'm  sure,  was  the  farthest  thing 
from  the  minds  of  the  composers,  of 
the  conductor  of  the  symphony,  and 
of  the  musicians  who  performed. 

Shortly  before  the  conference  took 
place  a  debate  had  raged  in  the  Tor- 
onto Globe  and  Mail  which  made 
most  of  the  participants  at  the  con- 
ference furious,  but  which  I  thought 
was  a  sign  of  vitality.  In  a  series  of 
articles  called  "Cult  or  Culture,"  a 
reporter  had  attacked  the  spending 
of  public  money  on  art  without  any 
public  control  of  how  it  is  spent;  he 
had  complained  about  the  widening 
gap  between  artist  and  public,  and 
the  "nihilism"  and  "obscurity"  of  art 
today.  Speakers  at  the  conference 
spluttered  about  it,  laughed  at  it,  de- 
rided it.  Dr.  Northrop  Frye,  the 
Principal  of  Victoria  College  in  Tor- 
onto University,  referred  to  it  in  a 
speech  as  "a  tedious  and  foolish 
harangue,"  and  dismissed  it  very 
neatly  by  saying:  "There  is,  of 
course,  no  'or'  about  it;  culture  has 
always  been  a  cult,  in  the  sense  of 
being  a  group  of  specialized  and  ex- 
acting disciplines.  It  is  natural  that 
some  people  should  resent  this,  just 
as  it  is  natural  that  some  people 
should  resent  the  fact  that  years  of 
hard  work  in  education  are  necessary 
to  the  best  life." 

But  the  harangue,  though  not  in- 
tended to  be,  was  a  tribute  to  the 
vitality  not  the  decadence  of  the  arts 
in  Canada.  You  can't  make  a 
fight  about  a  dead  issue.  The  arts 
in  C>anada  may  be  self-conscious,  l)ui 
nobody  can  say  they   are  not  lively. 


How  to  make  your 
money  grow  up 

with  your  family 


A  little  at  a  time  makes  a  lot  — when  you  stick  to  it. 
Millions  of  Americans  save  automatically  by  buying  U.S. 
Savings  Bonds  through  the  Payroll  Savings  Plan.  Just 
sign  up  once,  and  you'll  never  worry  about  saving  again. 


The  only  bills  that  don't  grow 
right  along  with  your  kids  are 
dollar  bills.  But  you  make  your 
dollars  grow  too— by  investing 
them  in  U.S.  Savings  Bonds.  Say 
you  start  to  put  $6.25  a  week 
into  U.S.  Savings  Bonds  when 
your  daughter  is  three  years  old. 
By  the  time  she's  in  high  school 
—and  wants  shoes  and  dresses 
and  the  beauty  shop  for  herself 
instead  of  for  her  doll— you'll 
have  close  to  $3,900  to  help  you 
meet  these  "growing-up 
expenses."  And  over  $600  will 
be  earned  interest. 


Ever  see  this  picture?  Probably  not  very 
often.  It's  of  President  Theodore  Roo.sevelt  as  he 
appears  on  the  largest  Series  E  Bond  the  public 
may  purchase— the  $10,000  U.S.  Savings  Bond. 
Most  Bond  buyers  collect  Thomas  Jefferson's 
picture.  He's  on  the  $50  Bond.  Cost:  just  $37.50. 

Why  U.S.  Savings  Bonds 
Make  Good  Saving  Sense 
•  You  invest  without  risk  under  a 
U.S.  Government  guarantee  .  You 
now  earn  S^%  interest  to  matu- 
rity .  You  can  save  automatically 
on  the  Payroll  Savings  Plan  .  You 
can  buy  Bonds  at  any  bank  .  Yoiir 
Bonds  are  protected  against  loss, 
fire,  even  theft  .  You  save  more 
than  money — you  buy  shares  in  a 
stronger  America. 


They'll  need  more  than  money.  They'll  need  a  peaceful  world  to  gro^^  up 
in.  U.S.  Savings  Bonds  are  shares  in  a  stronger  America.  Buying  them  helps 
your  country  assure  freedom's  security. 


.5  tv- 


ANNIVERSARY 

ii        IS'*! 


You  save  more  than  money 
with  U.S.  Savings  Bonds 

This  ailvertisingis  donatedby 

The  Advertising  Council  and  this  magazine. 


^•^^c^ 


'He  8t** 


I 


iilH^HiJil^ 


cs 


If 


iOMETI 

OPEN  HOUSE 

THIS  FALL! 


October  and  November  have  been  des- 
ignated "Open  House  in  Europe"  and 
you  are  invited  by  the  people  of  Europe ! 
In  addition  to  many,  many  special 
shows,  festivals,  events  and  activities 
available  only  at  this  time,  you  will 
be  able  to  meet  the  people  as  never 
before.  All  twenty-one  nations  will  be 
doing  their  utmost  to  help  you  see 
their  people  against  the  true  back- 
ground of  their  normal  lives.  At  a 
time  of  the  year  which  affords  a  more 
leisurely  pace,  a  more  thoughtful  ex- 
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duced transportation  rates  mean 
special  savings,  too! 
Your  travel  agent  will  help  you  plan 
your  trip.  Or,  for  a  free  brochure  de- 
scribing special  "Open  House"  attrac- 
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European  Travel  Commission 

Austria  •  Belgium  •  Denmark  •  Finland  •  Prance  ■  (jermany 

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HariDer 


MAGA 


ZINE 


AMERICA 


UNDER  PRESSURE 

A  political  commentary  by  Adlai  E.  Stevenson 


Is  our  society  losing  its  "immense  powers 

of  adaptation'  because  the  traditional  pressures 

for  change  and  growth  have  stopped  working? 

TH  E  quality  of  the  electorate,  the  news  it 
will  listen  to,  the  leads  it  will  follow,  the 
inconveniences  and  difficulties  it  is  prepared  to 
face— these  are  the  measure  of  effective  democ- 
racy. Even  within  our  system  of  checks  and  bal- 
ances, vigorous  and  effective  government  is  not 
impossible.  Our  republican  institutions  are  now 
among  the  oldest  continuous  political  institu- 
tions in  the  world.  They  could  not  have  survived 
from  a  rural,  decentralized  community  to  the 
modern  world  of  cities  and  industrial  concentra- 
tions without  immense  powers  of  adaptation. 
These  have  made  it  possible  for  great  Presidents 
to  reshape  popular  thinking  and  introduce  eras 
of  great  reform.  They  have  done  this  by  de- 
veloping a  close  dialogue  Avith  a  responsive  pub- 
lic opinion  and  thus  imposing  political  vision 
and  direction  on  the  chaos  of  separate  interests 
and  rival  lobbies  which  make  up— inevitably— so 
much  of  Congressional  politics. 

This  is  as  it  should  be.  For  interests  deserve 
representation,  and  the  compromises  of  counter- 
vailing power  make  for  healthier  social  condi- 
tions than  stifling  unity  imposed  from  above  by 


single  party  rule.  But  the  national  purpose  is 
more  than  a  sum  of  these  compromises— just  as 
the  citizen  is  more  than  a  member  of  his  own 
lobby.  He  is  neighbor,  parent,  worshiper,  and 
patriot  as  well.  The  great  social  purposes  of  a 
community— its  security,  the  quality  of  its  life 
and  education,  the  beauty  of  its  public  monu- 
ments, its  images  of  greatness,  its  communion 
with  past  and  future— all  these  must  be  expressed 
in  the  political  dialogue— and  cannot  be  if  the 
citizens  themselves  succumb  to  what  I  regard  as, 
historically,  the  three  great  distempers  of  the 
public  mind— reaction,  complacency,  and  medi- 
ocrity. 

Take  first  the  issue  of  reaction.  America  is  not 
in  temperament  essentially  conservative.  We 
have  no  feudal  past  such  as  anchors  so  many 
communities  in  unworkable  institutions  and  out- 
dated ideas.  We  were  born  in  the  morning  of 
popular  government  and  national  liberation  and 
some  of  that  fresh  light  still  falls  on  our  laces. 

\Vc  turn  most  naturally  to  the  future.  We  live 
in  hope,  not  fear.  All  this  is  true.  But  it  also  is 
true  that  the  challenge  presented  by  Soviet  power 
is  a  new  challenge.  It  is  that  of  an  apparently 
implacable  power  pressing  in  on  us  from  a 
steadily  widening  foreign  base  and  threatening, 
as  we  see  it,  all  that  is  most  precious  in  our  way 
of  life.    This  is  new  to  us. 

It  is  not,  however,  new  to  others.    Between 


22  AMERICA     UNDER     PRESSURE 


the  seventeenth  and  the  early  twentieth  century; 
this  was  precisely  the  type  of  pressure  that  West- 
ern nationalism,  mercantilism,  colonialism,  and 
capitalism  exercised  on  Asia,  Africa,  and  in  a 
rather  different  form  on  Latin  America.  West- 
erners in  those  days  appeared— to  Turks  or  Arabs 
or  Indians  or  Chinese— to  have  the  characteristics 
we  see  in  Communists  today.  They  seemed  im- 
placable men  convinced  of  their  own  mission 
and  superiority.  Their  power  was  growing.  Their 
influence  was  spreading— and  with  their  influence 
went  the  destruction  of  ancient  and  cherished 
beauties,  institutions,  and  beliefs. 


RUNNING     AWAY 


BACKWARD 


UNDER  this  disturbing  pressure— which 
we  in  the  West  are  only  now  beginning  to 
a]:)preciate,  from  experiencing  it  ourselves— peo- 
ples and  societies  reacted  in  opposite  ways.  In 
India,  for  example,  a  long  line  of  philosophers 
and  reformers— from  Sir  Ram  Mohan  Roy  in  the 
1820s  to  Pandit  Nehru  in  our  own  day— met  the 
Western  encroachment  with  intelligence,  bal- 
ance, and  a  readiness  to  judge  their  own  tradi- 
tions constructively  in  the  light  of  its  challenge. 
On  these  foundations  they  built  a  philosophy 
and  then  a  movement  which  were  able  to  reverse 
British  pressure,  re-create  Indian  society,  and 
achieve  independence  in  modern  terms.  But  dur- 
ing the  same  period,  other  Indian  groups  took 
an  opposite  line.  Leaders  hankering  for  old 
glories  and  unchanged  feudal  society  brought 
about  the  disasters  of  the  Mutiny.  Extreme 
Hindu  groups  took  to  terrorism  and  murder  in 
the  name  of  the  traditional  gods.  On  the  mor- 
row of  independence,  such  a  terrorist  killed 
Gandhi,  the  father  of  the  nation.  From  such 
sterile  reaction,  no  gain  came— no  nation  build- 
ing, no  emancipation,  nothing  but  counter- 
violence  and  hate.  In  short,  the  way  of  reaction 
proved  to  be  the  way  of  destruction. 

Now  let  us  look  at  another  instance— this  time 
between  nations,  not  within  the  same  com- 
munity. When  in  the  nineteenth  century,  West- 
ern pressure  in  the  Far  East  became  irresistible, 
the  Manchu  leaders  of  China  refused  to  recog- 
nize the  fact.  The  regime  of  the  Empress  Dow- 
ager took  refuge  in  an  ever  deeper  conservatism. 
The  modernization  of  any  part  of  the  state  was 
virtually  made  impossible  by  the  stagnant,  back- 
ward-looking court.  Then  rule  by  eunuchs  and 
assassination— typical  of  all  China's  worst  periods 
—continued  while  the  Western  powers  filched 
away  ports,  treaties,  territories,  customs,  conces- 
sions, spheres  of  interest,  and  turned  the  proud 


empire  into  the  sick  man  of  Asia— everyone's 
butt  and  everyone's  prey. 

During  the  same  years,  the  leaders  of  Japan 
looked  at  Western  civilization  squarely  and  in 
an  intense  revolutionary  effort  took  over  from  it 
what  was  necessary  to  keep  it  out.  As  a  result, 
while  China  still  drifted  on,  as  storm-tossed  and 
rudderless  as  a  junk  in  a  typhoon,  Japan  rose  to 
modern  power  in  a  generation.  Once  again,  the 
way  of  sterile  reaction  brought  disaster,  while 
change  and  adaptation  ensured  the  power  to 
survive. 

Or  let  us  take  a  more  recent  instance— the  re- 
sponse to  Communist  pressure  given  by  Hitler's 
Germany.  Allegedly  to  keep  the  Communists 
out.  Hitler  adopted  all  communism's  most  reac- 
tionary techniques— the  single  party,  the  single 
ideology,  tyranny,  total  censorship,  total  police 
power,  government  by  torture  and  murder.  And 
the  result?  After  a  rjiinous  war,  half  Europe  fell 
under  Communist  control— a  warning  against 
those  self-styled  defenders  of  freedom  against 
communism  who  care  nothing  about  killing  free- 
dom in  the  process  of  conducting  their  "defense." 

These  are  not  remote  historical  analogies. 
They  are  relevant  to  our  experience  here  and 
now.  The  central  traditions  of  our  country  are 
liberal,  generous,  and  forward-looking.  But,  in 
times  of  stress  our  history  has  continued  to  throw 
up  groups  of  irreconcilable  reactionaries  whose 
solution  to  the  problems  of  the  age  lies  in 
violence,  hysteria,  distrust,  and  £ear-mongering. 
The  Know-Nothings,  the  Ku-Klux  Klan,  the  Mc- 
Carthyites,  the  White  Segregationists— all  these 
are  recurrent  manifestations  of  the  spirit  of 
irrational  reaction.  I  do  not  know  whether  our 
new  tensions  are  breeding— in  the  John  Birch 
Society— yet  another  outburst  of  this  destructive 
and  defeatist  spirit.  But  I  do  know  that  history 
gives  us  only  one  verdict  on  the  outcome  of 
looking  in  times  of  crisis  to  a  fearful  and  back- 
ward conservatism.  The  outcome  is  quite  simply 
defeat.  Men  do  not  overcome  their  crises  by 
running  away  from  them  backward.  No  cosy 
retreats  from  a  challenging  future  can  be  looked 


Adlai  E.  Stevenson  was  one  of  America's  best 
known  citizens  throughout  the  world  even  before 
his  appointment  by  President  Kennedy  to  be  U.  S. 
Representative  to  the  United  Nations.  In  recent 
months  he  has  had  to  speak  for  this  country  in 
some  of  the  most  complex  and  dangerous  situations 
of  the  Cold  War.  Former  Governor  of  Illinois  and 
twice  the  Presidential  candidate  of  the  Democratic 
party,  he  is  also  the  author  of  "The  New  America" 
"IV hat  I  Think"  and  other  books. 


I 


23 


for  in  an  outgrown  past.  Times  of  challenge  are 
limes  for  new  frontiers,  not  last  ditches. 

Yet  reaction  is  not  our  chief  danger.  The 
greater  risk  in  our  present  crisis  is  not  that 
public  opinion  will  react  with  a  blind  and  back- 
ward-looking conservatism,  but  that  it  may  not 
react  at  all.  Complacency,  not  frenzied  John 
Birchery,  may  be  our  chief  weakness,  and  it  is 
easy  to  imderstand  why  this  is  so.  We  are  the 
wealthiest  society  in  depth  that  the  world  has 
ever  seen.  More  people  enjoy  more  comfort  than 
at  any  previous  time.  Yet  there  is  no  guarantee 
that  whole  communities  are  any  more  immune 
than  families  or  classes  from  the  typical  tempta- 
tions of  affluence.  Inertia,  indifference,  exaltation 
of  the  pleasure  principle,  a  falling  away  in 
curiosity  and  human  sympathy^all  these  afflict 
so-called  "Caf^  Society."  They  can  afflict  general 
society  as  well. 

Three-quarters  of  mankind  still  live  in  a 
poverty  so  grinding,  in  such  pitiful  conditions  of 
health  and  livelihood,  that  the  framework  of 
their  brief  lives  is  not  very  distant  from  Hobbes' 
definition:  "nasty,  brutish,  and  short."  But  when 
Hobbes  wrote,  the  rich  minority  contrived  to 
overlook  the  spectacle.  In  France,  the  Court 
played  at  shepherds  and  shepherdesses  while  the 
peasants  ate  grass.  Today  we  in  America  are  the 
rich  minority  of  world  society.  Are  we  any  less 
prone  than  they  to  while  away  our  most  precious 
gift  of  time  in  pursuit  of  distractions  fully  as 
trivial  as  those  of  Le  Trianon  or  Le  Hameau? 
Indeed,  we  have  in  television  an  instrument  of 
mass  entertainment  that  does  not  even  demand 
that  we  dress  up  as  shepherds  ourselves.  We  can 
watch  other  people  doing  it  for  us  and  sink  to 
an  even  greater  passivity  of  mind  and  spirit.  A 
nation  of  viewers,  gazing  at  what  FCC  Chairman 
Newton  Minow  calls  the  "wasteland"  of  the  tele- 
vision screen,  is  not  likely  to  widen  its  sympathies 
or  feel  its  instincts  of  justice  and  compassion 
deeply  stirred.  Yet  no  wealthy  group  in  the 
modern  age  has  finally  resisted  the  inroads  of 
popular  misery  and  revolt  while  clinging  to  all 
the  trivia  of  a  self-indulgent  existence.  History 
is  neither  made  nor  changed  by  the  complacent 
and  the  comfortable.  On  the  contrary,  it  is  made 
against  them  and  at  their  expense. 

This  complacency  in  our  society  has  its  bear- 
ing on  a  third  weakness  in  popular  opinion  to- 
day—the risk  of  mediocrity.  Our  tradition  was 
founded  and  constantly  renewed  by  great  leaders 
responding  to  a  popular  demand  for  great  ac- 
tion. AVashington  and  Jefferson  guided  and 
canalized  the  general  revolt  against  colonial  rule. 
Lincoln  directed  the  energies  of  a  mighty  nation 


Coming  this  fall  in  Harper's 

THE    COLLEGE    SCENE 

A  Special  Supplement  on 

The  New  Generation 

of  Undergraduates  and  Teachers 

The  quality  of  their  education  .  .  . 
The  reality  of  their  politics  .  .  . 
The  mood  of  their  campus  Hfe  .  .  . 

Articles  by  McGeorge  Bundy,  Philip  Rieff, 
David  Boroff,  Nathan  Glazer,  Reuel  Wil- 
son, Christopher  Jencks,  and  others 


at  war  with  itself  over  the  great  principles  of 
human  freedom.  Theodore  Roosevelt  and  Wood- 
row  Wilson  caught  the  reforming  tide  set  flowing 
by  popular  disgust  at  the  raw  money-grubbing 
capitalism  of  our  "Robber  Baron"  epoch.  Frank- 
lin Roosevelt  mobilized  popular  despair  over  the 
Depression  behind  his  New  Deal,  and  Harry 
Truman  caught  up  the  expectations  and  hopes 
of  the  immediate  postwar  years  into  the  superb 
strategy  of  the  Marshall  Plan.  In  every  case  a 
ferment  among  the  people  enabled  leaders  of 
stature  to  direct  that  ferment  into  new,  imagi- 
native, and  epoch-making  acts  of  policy. 

Against  this  background,  our  present  predica- 
ment is  deeply  disturbing.  The  need  for  great 
acts  of  statesmanship  is  more  urgent  than  ever 
before.  Wherever  we  look  there  confronts  us  a 
stark  crisis,  demanding  greatness  for  its  resolu- 
tion. And  most  of  them  have  nothing  directly  to 
do  with  communism.  They  would  exist  in  any 
case.  All  that  communism  does  is,  by  its  extra 
pressure,  to  make  their  resolution  more  urgent. 

In  our  domestic  economy,  we  have  not  been 
able  to  reconcile  the  need  for  economic  growth 
with  the  desire  for  price  stability.  While  West- 
ern Europe  has  achieved  rates  of  growth  double 
and  treble  ours,  we  have  lagged  behind  with  a 
2  per  cent  rate  that  does  not  fully  absorb  our 
rising  population.  This  in  turn  aggravates  the 
problem  of  our  growing  level  of  built-in  unem- 
ployment. Bold  new  measures  of  replacing  and 
retraining,  new  restraints  on  wage  increases  and 
speculation,  more  competition  for  greater  effi- 
ciency are  clearly  needed  to  reverse  these  trends. 

We  add  to  our  population  a  city  the  size  of 
Philadelphia  every  year.  These  millions  will 
s^vell  the  millions  already  crowding  into  our  vast 


24  AMERICA     UNDER     PRESSURE 


*^ 


urban  concentrations,  there  to  live  with  all  the 
discomforts  of  congestion,  commuting,  and  de- 
clining civic  services,  caught  between  an  urban 
life  without  community  and  a  nonurban  life 
without  access  to  natural  life  and  beauty.  Only 
heroic  measures  of  urban  renewal,  metropolitan 
planning,  and  nation-wide  conservation  can  save 
our  national  life  from  foundering  in  a  series  of 
shapeless,  soulless  urban  sprawls. 

The  challenge  abroad  is  if  anything  tougher. 
We  have  used  up  the  momentum  the  Marshall 
Plan  gave  to  bolder  Western  association.  The 
trade  areas  we  call  the  Six  and  the  Seven  are  still 
divided  in  Europe.  The  exchange  reserves  of 
the  non-Commtmist  countries  are  inadequate  to 
cover  their  rising  trade.  Their  capital  assistance 
to  developing  areas,  though  considerable,  has 
been  undirected  and  unco-ordinated— and  often 
w\asted.  Their  trad^  policies,  particularly  in  re- 
gard to  slumping  commodity  prices,  have  often 
undone  the  work  their  aid  was  supposed  to  ac- 
complish. 

All  these  facts  point  toward  a  unified  North 
Atlantic  economy  and  community,  which  by 
freer  competition  and  expanding  internal  trade 
would  pile  up  capital  for  use  in  the  developing 
world,  and  by  its  prosperity  attract  the  trade  of 
other  nations.  Such  a  community  would  also  be 
politically  cohesive  enough  to  roll  back  Soviet 
pressure  in  Europe,  compete  with  it  successfully 
in  the  developing  world,  and  provide  within  the 
wider  framework  of  the  United  Nations  a  first 
concrete  example  of  the  kind  of  confederal  as- 
sociation under  law  which  the  nations  of  the 
world  must  ultimately  achieve  if  they  are  to 
avoid  the  final  horrors  of  atomic  war. 

ATTUNED     TO     GREATNESS 

THESE  are  not  remote  needs.  They  are 
immediate  necessities.  But  how  are  we  to 
rally  public  opinion  for  such  great  tasks?  Our 
complacency  threatens  to  breed  mediocrity  of 
aim— "You  never  had  it  so  good";  mediocrity 
of  response— "I'm  all  right.  Jack";  mediocrity  of 
vision— our  monument,  in  the  poet's  phrase,  "a 
thousand  lost  golf  balls."  In  the  past,  social  dis- 
content was  the  fuel  of  the  engine  of  progress. 
Today,  we  have  never  needed  creative  change 
more  urgently.  Yet  we  were  never  so  lacking  in 
divine  discontent. 

Of  course,  we  must  not  restore  genuine  misery 
in  order  to  restore  general  momentum.  We  must 
somehow  find,  in  alert,  educated,  respoiisilile 
public  response,  an  ahcrnaiive  lo  the  old  dis- 
contented pressures  for  change.    In  every  s(nil, 


I  believe,  there  lies  not  only  the  desire  to  be 
left  in  peace  but  also  the  desire  to  feel  part  of  a 
great  adventure.  It  was  the  glory  of  Athens- 
prototype  of  all  free  societies— that  by  the  spon- 
taneous will  of  the  citizens,  it  could  outface  the 
might  of  Persia  and  outthink  the  leaden  dis- 
cipline of  the  Spartans.  We  carry  in  our  minds 
echoes  of  Pericles'  great  Funeral  Oration: 

"We  admit  anyone  to  our  city  and  do  not 
expel  foreigners  for  fear  that  they  should  see  too 
much,  because  in  war  we  trust  to  our  bravery 
and  daring  rather  than  stratagems  and  prepara- 
tions: Our  enemies  prepare  for  war  by  a  labori- 
ous training  from  boyhood;  we  live  at  our  ease, 
but  are  no  less  confident  in  facing  danger.  .  .  . 
We  love  the  arts,  but  without  lavish  display,  and 
the  things  of  the  mind  but  without  becoming 
soft." 

So  long  as  this  temper  prevailed,  Athens 
proved  invulnerabla.  Its  voice  remained  the 
voice  of  confidence,  of  excellence,  of  a  com- 
munity attuned  to  greatness,  drawing  its  reform- 
ing energies  not  from  the  miseries  of  past  and 
present,  but  from  a  high  vision  of  the  future. 
During  its  greatest  days,  it  proved  once  and  for 
all  that  free  societies  can  show  this  vitality,  that 
free  societies  can  be  the  history-making  forces  in 
the  world. 

But  today  our  society  is  far  indeed  from  a 
Periclean  spontaneity  and  vitality.  Reading  fur- 
ther in  Thucydides,  I  found  this  disturbing  com- 
parison of  ^Athenians  with  Spartans: 

"They-^tlie  Athenians— are  always  thinking  of 
new  schen/es  and  are  quick  to  make  their  plans 
and  to  carry  them  out.  You— Sparta— are  content 
with  what  you  have  and  are  reluctant  to  do  even 
what  is  necessary.  They  are  bold,  adventurous, 
sanguine;  you  are  cautious  and  trust  neither  your 
power  nor  your  judgment." 

Today,  who  is  Sparta,  who  is  Athens?  Who 
has  the  initiative?  Who  is  making  the  schemes? 
Who  is  bold  and  adventurous?  Who  is  cautious 
and  "reluctant  to  do  even  what  is  necessary"? 
Have  free  men  become  the  conservatives  and  the 
Communists  the  adventurers  and  innovators? 
Can  there  be  more  to  Khrushchev's  confidence 
that  he  will  "bury  us"  than  brash  self-assertion? 
Has  he  captured  a  sense  of  history  that  we  in  the 
West  have  lost? 

I  hope  I  know  the  answer  to  these  questions. 
I  hope  that  I  can  say. that  while  free  society  may 
have  slumbered  for  a  little  and  rested  and  drawn 
breaili,  it  is  ready  again  for  great  purposes  and 
greai  tasks,  and  tliat  its  creative  imagination, 
rearousetl  and  refreshed,  is  e(|ua!  to  all  the  crisis 
and  cliallenge  of  our  perilous  days. 

Harper's  Magazine,  August  1961 


ALLAN    TEMKO 


HOW  NOT 

TO  BUILD  A 

BALL  PARK 


Ever  try  to  play  baseball  in  a  wind  scoop? 

That's  what  the  San  Francisco  Giants  are  doing. 

There  are  lessons  (not  all  of  them  architecttiral, 

by  any  means)  in  Candlestick  Park  for  other 

cities  that  are  now  on  a  ball-park-building  spree. 

SUMMER  is  upon  the  pleasant  land,  and 
this  fun-loving  nation  once  more  is  being 
taken— out  at  the  ball  park.  The  taking  is  being 
done  by  genial  club  owners,  politicians,  contrac- 
tors, financiers,  lawyers,  and  sports  writers— who 
in  this  age  of  panem  et  circenses  have  convinced 
several  cities  that  they  dearly  need  not  only 
major-league  baseball,  but  new  stadiums  to  go 
Avith  it.  Although  insufficient  money  is  available 
nowadays  for  housing,  schools,  hospitals,  and 
even  modest  neighborhood  playgrounds,  there 
seems  to  be  no  shortage  of  funds  for  the  national 
pastime,  which  was  described  by  F.  Scott  Fitz- 
gerald as  "a  boy's  game  with  no  more  possibili- 
ties in  it  than  a  boy  could  master,  a  game 
bounded  by  walls  which  kept  out  novelty  or 
danger,  change  or  adventure." 

More  than  a  boy's  pocket  money  is  required, 
however,  to  stage  big-tiine  baseball.  In  New  York 
for  example,  $19  million  has  been  appropriated 
—and  such  sums  have  a  way  of  growing— tor  the 
construction  of  a  55,000-seat  arena  on  public 
parkland  in  Flushing  Meadows.  Los  Angeles, 
another  metropolis  with  no  lack  of  slums,  is 
spending  $18  million  for  the  Dodgers'  stadium  in 
Chavez  Ravine,  a  site  once  designated  for  low- 
cost  public  housing.    Washington,  Houston,  and 


other  cities  also  aie  erecting  expensive  homes 
for  their  teams;  and  one  can  hope  that  in  the 
planning  stage,  they  have  considered  the  experi- 
ence of  balmy  San  Francisco,  which  can  serve  as 
a  model  of  kindly  hospitality  to  commerical 
baseball. 

This  is  the  Giants'  fourth  season  in  San  Fran- 
cisco and  their  second  at  Candlestick  Park,  the 
controversial  stadium  beside  the  Bay  which-at  a 
cost  of  more  than  $15  million— was  rushed  to  com- 
pletion by  the  city  when  the  team  was  induced  to 
abandon  New  York  in  1958.  (At  the  same  time, 
it  will  be  remembered,  the  Dodgers  moved  from 
Brooklyn  to  Los  Angeles.)  The  first  two  years  in 
San  Francisco  the  Giants  played  at  old  Seals 
Stadium,  near  the  downtown  breweries;  and  it 
was  there  that  they  nearly  won  the  pennant  in 
1959.  When  Candlestick  Park  opened  the  follow- 
ing spring,  therefore,  enthusiastic  fans  had  reason 
to  hope  that  the  45,000-seat  structure  would  be 
the  scene  of  the  next  World  Series. 

Instead— in  a  setting  worthy  of  a  Greek  amphi- 
theatre—the Giants  enacted  a  classical  drama  of 
the  diamond,  starting  the  1960  season  as  heroes, 
and  finishing  (if  the  ambiguous  term  will  be  par- 
doned in  Brooklyn  and  L.A.)  as  bums. 

The  team's  ignoble  fate  aroused  not  only  jiity 
in  the  bosoms  of  nearly  1,800,000  paying  cus- 
tomers (more  than  the  pennant-winning  Yankees 
drew  the  same  season  in  New  York),  but,  appar- 
ently, terror  in  the  mind  of  owner  Horace  Stone- 
ham,  who  promptly  conducted  purification  rites. 
A  devout  new  manager,  Alvin  Dark,  was  put  in 
charge  of  what  had  been  a  notably  light-hearted 
group  of  ball  players.  The  insouciant  outfielder 
Willie  Kirkland  was  bartered  to  Cleveland.  So 
was  the  prideful  pitcher  Johnny  Antonelli. 
Harvey  Kuenn,  a  worthy  batsman,  was  acquired 
in  exchange.  And  now,  at  midsummer,  the 
Giants,  led  by  the  incomparable  Willie  Mays, 
who  hit  four  home  runs  in  a  single  game  on 
April  30,  once  more  hope  to  conquer. 

But  if  the  team's  fault  lies  not  in  its  stars,  it 
may  reside  in  the  seemingly  blameless  stadium. 
For  if  Candlestick  Park,  when  first  sighted  from 
the  Bayshore  freeway  on  the  southern  limits  of 
the  city,  appears  radiantly  innocent  in  the  sun- 
light, it  is  far  from  a  simple  monument  to  healthy 
sport.  Like  professional  baseball  itself,  however, 
the  great,  semicircidar  structure  of  exposed  con- 
crete does  make  a  cheerful  show  of  outward  vigor. 
The  top  of  the  grandstand,  particularly,  is  very 
forceful  and  clear.  Its  rounded  lid  (which  is  a 
wind-baffle  only,  rather  than  a  true  roof  for  the 
upper  tier)  is  mounted  on  spectacular  sculptural 
elements,  shaped  like  inverted  Y's,  Avhich  bend 


26 


HOW     NOT     TO     BUILD     A     BALL     PARK 


with  the  shell  and  then  fork  downward  into  the 
structure  below.  For  this  feature  alone  architect 
John  Bolles  and  engineers  Chin  and  Hensolt  of 
San  Francisco  deserve  high  commendation.  It 
places  Candlestick  in  a  category  well  above  the 
run  of  major-league  parks,  which  are  probably 
the  worst-designed  large  stadiums  in  the  world. 

Yet  on  closer  view  Candlestick  rapidly  loses 
glory.  The  tundra  of  parking  lots,  which  can 
accommodate  eight  thousand  cars  and  three  hun- 
dred buses,  contributes  to  this  melancholy  effect, 
for  no  effort  was  made  to  relieve  the  expanse  of 
blacktop  with  greenery.  At  the  crest  of  the  steep 
approach  (nicknamed  "Cardiac  Hill")  the  un- 
inviting main  entrance  bears  some  resemblance 
to  a  prison  gate;  and  in  the  structure  which  lifts 
heavily  behind  it,  what  had  appeared  gleaming, 
strong,  and  decisive  at  a  distance  now  seems  mud- 
dled, unfinished,  and  somehow  cheap. 

The  raw,  unpainted  concrete,  for  example, 
which  would  have  been  perfectly  acceptable  if 
carefully  surfaced,  was  left  slovenly,  as  if  the 
workmen  had  hurried  from  the  job.  The  ramps 
leading  to  the  upper  deck  seem  brutally  flung 
about  at  hazard.  In  fact,  on  the  exterior,  only 
the  tall,  steel  floodlight  pylons— the  most  elegant 
in  the  country,  perhaps— fulfill  Candlestick's  first 
promise. 

A     GOOD     DEAL  ? 

TH  E  story  of  the  financing  and  building  of 
the  stadium,  which  would  have  been  com- 
plex under  any  circumstances,  has  been  further 
complicated  by  lawsuits,  some  of  which  remain 
unsettled.  A  Grand  Jury  investigation  of  Candle- 
stick in  1958  came  to  the  conclusion:  "The  city 
did  not  get  a  good  deal."  (Two  jurors  dissented, 
however,  and  commended  the  city  on  "a  very 
efficient  and  excellent  job.")  The  Grand  Jury 
report  led  to  an  angry  exchange  between  Mayor 
George  Christopher  and  the  foreman,  Henry 
North,  which  culminated  in  a  slander  suit  against 
the  Mayor,  its  withdrawal  after  a  public  reconcil- 
iation, and  a  mutual  pledge  to  "work  toward  a 
greater-than-ever  San  Francisco." 

The  Grand  Jury's  findings  related  chiefly  to 
land  acquisition,  financing,  and  costs. 

By  failing  to  use  its  power  of  eminent  domain 
at  the  time  when  the  Candlestick  Point  site  was 
under  consideration  in  1956,  the  Jury  said,  the 
city  allowed  prices  to  rise  and  therefore  paid 
from  $650,000  to  a  million  dollars  over  a  fair 
market  value  for  the  land.  The  greater  part  of 
the  77  acres  purchased  was  a  property  of  41  acres 
owned  by  Charles  L.  Harney,  some  of  it  under 


water.  Mr.  Harney,  the  contractor  for  the  job, 
received  $2.7  million  from  the  city  for  the  land 
—approximately  $66,000  per  acre,  though  it  had 
been  assessed  in  1956  for  only  $26,730  per  acre. 
(Some  of  this  Mr.  Harney  had  purchased  in  1953 
for  about  $2,100  per  acre.) 

As  to  costs,  the  Grand  Jury  pointed  out  that 
the  voters  had  authorized  $5  million  for  the  land 
and  stadium;  but  by  1958,  estimated  costs  "may 
exceed  $15  million."  To  arrange  for  additional 
financing,  a  nonprofit  corporation,  Stadium,  Inc., 
was  formed  in  1957,  with  Mr.  Harney  and  two  of 
his  employees  as  officers  and  directors. 

"It  was  illogical,"  said  the  Grand  Jury,  "for 
Stadium,  Inc.,  with  its  directorate  of  Harney 
men,  to  act  for  the  City  and  County  of  San 
Francisco,  and,  at  the  same  time,  have  Harney, 
the  contractor,  selling  land  to  the  city  and  con- 
structing a  stadium,  so  on  February  28,  1958,  it 
was  decided  to  substitute  other  officials,  and 
three  prominent  arfd  influential  men  [Allan  K. 
Browne,  W.  P.  Fuller  Brawner,  and  Frederic  P. 
Whitman]  were  asked  to  serve  as  directors.  .  .  . 
The  nonprofit  corporation  is  in  a  very  literal 
sense  the  alter  ego  of  the  city." 

Although  the  Grand  Jury  said  it  believed  the 
nonprofit  corporation  may  be  a  useful  financial 
device,  it  said  that,  in  this  case,  if  city  bonds 
had  been  issued  instead  of  those  of  the  corpora- 
tion, "a  very  considerable  saving  of  interest  would 
have  resulted."  The  Grand  Jury  explicitly  de- 
nied "inferring  that  we  found  anything  dishonest 
about  this  deal,"  but  it  stated: 

"The  end  result,  therefore,  of  the  establishment 
of  this  nonprofit  corporation  is  that  the  city 
could  avoid  securing  the  voters'  approval  of  an 
additional  expenditure  of  approximately  ten  mil- 
lion, could  by-pass  the  Charter  provision  with 
regard  to  bidding,  and  could  and  did  channel 
this  vast  project  without  competitive  bidding,  to 
the  contractor  of  their  choice.  .  .  . 

"It  is  our  conviction  that  where  so  much  addi- 
tional money  is  involved,  a  few  city  officials 
should  not  accept  responsibility  for  the  invest- 
ment  of  millions    unauthorized   by    the   voters. 


Allan  Temko,  who  grew  up  in  New  York, 
lived  in  France  for  a  while  after  the  war  and  wrote 
"Nolre-Dame  of  Paris:  The  Biography  of  a  Cathe- 
dral.'' Now  living  in  Berkeley,  he  is  West  Coast 
associate  editor  of  "Architectural  Forum"  and 
writes  for  the  San  Francisco  "Chronicle"  and  many 
magazines.  II is  last  article  in  "Harper  s"  ("San 
Francisco  Rebuilds  Again")  won  the  first  prize  in 
the  American  Institute  of  Architects  Architectural 
Journalism  Competition  this  spring. 


despite  their  conviction  that  major-league  base- 
ball would  be  a  fine  thing  for  San  Francisco." 

Precisely  what  motives  animated  the  respon- 
sible officials  during  this  period— other  than 
frantic  haste  to  bring  a  major-league  ball  club 
to  a  city  which  does  not  possess  a  decent  theatre 
—will  probably  never  be  known.  But  Supervisor 
James  Leo  Halley  proposed  that  the  grateful 
municipality  name  the  ball  park  Harney  Stadium. 

This  struck  a  note  which  vibrated  among  the 
citizenry.  Many  San  Franciscans  suggested  in- 
stead that  the  name  Candlestick  (taken  from  the 
harbor  point)  be  changed  to  "Candlestink."  This 
is  because  of  the  aroma  of  the  nearby  tidal  flats 
which  is  often  picked  up  by  the  breeze.  On 
many  days,  of  course,  the  breeze  is  a  wind  power- 
ful enough  to  play  havoc  with  hitting  and  fielding, 
and  the  visitor  feels  its  force  soon  after  he  enters 
the  stands. 


FAIR     IS     FOUL 

AND     FOUL     IS     FAIR 

YE  T  the  visitor  forgets  the  wind  momen- 
tarily and  is  oblivious  to  most  of  the 
stadium's  tawdry  details  (such  as  the  poorly 
joined  railing  on  which  I  scored  my  hand  upon 
first  entering),  as  soon  as  the  great  sweep  of  space 
toward  the  Bay  opens  before  his  eyes. 

Here  the  taxpayers  get  something  like  their 
money's  worth.  Candlestick  commands  a  mag- 
nificent view  of  harbor,  sky,  and  distant  hills. 
Across  a  broad  cove  of  the  Bay  are  the  giant 
cranes  of  the  Hunters  Point  naval  station,  and, 
often,  standing  out  to  sea  is  a  destroyer  or  a  high- 
riding  tanker.  The  water  is  alive  with  white  sails, 
and  on  game  days  some  fans  arrive  by  boat,  a 
very  San  Franciscan  touch.  The  shoreline  in  the 
foreground,  between  the  stadium  and  the  water's 


edge,  remains  unsightly,  to  be  sure,  but  it  can 
easily  be  cleared  by  some  wise  municipal  govern- 
ment of  the  future,  and  then  Candlestick  Point 
can  become  the  green,  multipurpose  recreational 
groimds  it  might  have  been  from  the  start. 

So  far  so  good.  The  remarkable  spaciousness 
of  the  stadium's  interior  is  enhanced  by  an  ex- 
tremely open  seating  plan  and  generous  aisles. 
The  pastel  seats,  which  vary  in  hue  according 
to  price,  add  charming  color  (although  the  con- 
crete remains  brutally  raw);  and  the  over-all  lines 
of  the  stands,  which  do  not  rise  too  steeply,  are 
handsome.  A  mezzanine  hung  from  the  upper 
deck  emphasizes  the  tremendous  curve  of  the 
structure  and  provides  a  superb  horizontal  line 
which  shows  how  distinguished  the  architecture 
might  have  been. 

Yet,  as  on  the  exterior,  inspection  again  reveals 
serious  failings.  Although  engineering  today 
makes  unobstructed  space  possible  even  in  vast 
buildings,  the  architect  here  relied  on  columns— 
the  bane  of  spectators  unlucky  enough  to  sit 
behind  them— to  support  the  upper  deck.  These 
round  steel  pillars  are  well  set  back  in  the  lower 
stand  (granted,  they  do  not  interfere  to  the 
same  degree  as  the  forest  of  columns  in  the 
Giants'  old  Polo  Grounds  in  New  York),  but  the 
architect  concedes  that  they  could  have  been 
omitted  at  an  additional  cost  of  only  $250,000. 
The  figure  seems  high.  Probably  a  different  struc- 
tural concept  could  have  been  column-free  at  lit- 
tle or  no  extra  cost,  if  only  because  these 
columns  are  of  solid  steel  and  quite  expensive. 

There  are  also  vexing  blind  spots  in  the 
column-free  upper  stands,  however,  and  they  re- 
veal how  complex  is  the  job  of  designing  a  large 
baseball  stadium.  On  jxiper  it  must  have  seemed 
a  good  idea  to  bring  the  stands  rather  closer  than 
is  usual  to  the  playing  field.    But  the  result  has 


28 


HOW     NOT     TO     BUILD     A     BALL     PARK 


been  that,  from  broad  areas  of  the  upper  deck, 
sharply  pulled  balls  are  lost  from  sight,  and  low- 
traveling  home  runs  close  to  the  foul  line  cannot 
be  seen  clearing  the  fence  except  on  the  side  of 
the  field.  .  .  .  That  is,  //  drives  which  normally 
would  go  out  of  the  park  even  reach  the  fence  in 
the  face  of  the  wind. 

"temple    of    the    winds" 

Ho  M  E  runs— by  both  the  Giants  and  their 
opponents  last  year  in  Candlestick— were 
remarkably  scarce.  The  barriers  are  being  brought 
closer  to  the  plate  this  year  for  precisely  that 
reason,  and  a  45-foot-high  backdrop  has  been 
installed  in  center  field— at  a  cost  of  $45,000— 
in  order  to  improve  visibility  for  the  hitters. 
But  outfielders  will  probably  continue  to  leap 
forward  for  balls  which  first  seem  to  be  flying 
far  over  their  heads.  For  perhaps  the  most  ap- 
propriate name  yet  offered  for  Candlestick  is 
"Temple  of  the  Winds."  The  air  currents, 
sweeping  off  the  hills  and  the  harbor,  move  not 
only  with  exceptional  velocity,  but  in  an  unpre- 
dictable variety  of  directions. 

Sometimes  one  flag  in  the  outfield  will  be 
ripj)ling  toward  the  Bay,  or  hanging  limp,  while 
another  is  stiffly  directed  toward  right  field.  In 
this  corner  of  the  stands  the  rounded  shield  of 
the  upper  deck  apparently  acts  not  as  a  baffle  but 
as  a  wind-scoop,  funneling  great  blasts  of  air 
around  the  diamond  until  they  come  whirling 
out  over  left  field  again.  In  their  artless,  vocifer- 
ous way  the  players  have  complained  about  these 
gusts  which,  they  claim,  affect  even  pitched  balls. 

At  night— and  of  course  a  good  half  of  the 
games  are  now  nocturnal— the  wind  subsides,  but 
the  fog  rolls  in  from  the  Bay.  Candlestick  is 
probably  the  only  major-league  park  where  the 
umpires  delayed  a  game  for  an  hour,  although 
no  rain  was  falling,  because  a  solid  bank  of  fog, 
worthy  of  the  Labrador  shelf,  floated  into  the 
stadium  and  stayed  there  one  night  last  summer. 
And  again  like  a  Labrador  fog,  this  one  was  cold. 
Although  nearly  half  of  Candlestick's  seats  are 
equipped  for  radiant  heating  (another  unique 
feature  of  the  stadium),  the  system  thus  far  has 
proven  remarkably  ineffective,  and  prudent  spec- 
tators dress  for  night  games  as  if  they  were  camp- 
ing out  in  a  Sierra  winter. 

Such  are  Candlestick's  major  failings.  Among 
its  minor  shortcomings  it  is  enough  to  mention 
that  the  screen  bchirid  home  plate  is  crude;  the 
scoreboard  resembles,  atid  in  hut  is,  a  vulgar 
advertising  sign;  and  the  grass  is  far  from  being  a 
lush  greensward. 


How  many  of  these  faults  could  have  been 
avoided?  Surely  the  wind  might  have  been  con- 
trolled in  so  large  a  structure,  since  from 
the  earliest  stages  of  the  project  the  severity  of  the 
wind  problem  should  have  been  obvious.  When 
work  had  scarcely  begun,  ia  construction  superin- 
tendent pointed  out  to  a  Chronicle  reporter  that 
an  eight-degree  change  in  alignment  might  have 
allowed  the  upper  grandstand  to  shut  off  the  wind 
coming  into  right  field.  But,  he  added,  "there 
ain't  gonna  be  nothin'  to  stop  it.  And  man,  does 
she  blow!" 

Only  now  has  the  city  put  up  |54,925— another 
of  the  high  figures  which  have  a  way  of  creeping 
into  the  history  of  Candlestick— for  meteorologi- 
cal tests  which  may  not  even  be  final.  Possibly 
the  only  way  to  correct  the  wind  condition  will 
be,  as  has  been  suggested,  to  cover  the  entire 
structure  with  a  geodesic  dome  or  some  other 
kind  of  roof.  R.  Buckminster  Fuller,  inventor 
of  the  geodesic  dome,  estimates  the  cost  of  such 
a  translucent  covering  at  .$3.5  million. 

As  the  baseball  season  waxes,  so  do  the  law 
suits,  and  soon,  vinless  there  is  an  out-of-court 
settlement,  San  Franciscans  may  be  treated  to  a 
gamy  trial.  On  the  basis  of  a  ten-page  list  of 
sixty-one  disputed  items  drawn  up  by  Mr.  Bolles, 
Stadium,  Inc.  is  asking  for  a  $2,522,400  indemnity 
from  Mr.  Harney  for  alleged  failure  to  fulfill 
his  contract.  Mr.  Harney  is  charged  not  only 
with  failure  to  complete  the  stadium  on  time, 
but  also  with  inadequate  filling,  grading,  and 
paving  of  the  parking  area;  installation  of  de- 
fective seats,  electrical  outlets,  and  plumbing 
fixtures;  and  failure  to  provide  proper  heating 
and  waterproofing  systems. 

But  this  is  only  a  cross-complaint  against  a 
larger  claim  which  Harney  himself  filed  last 
August  against  the  city.  The  affluent  contractor 
charged  that  an  undue  number  of  changes  were 
made  in  the  original  design  for  which  he  said  the 
city  owed  him  an  additional  $2,734,480. 

The  Giants  for  their  part,  although  the  value 
of  the  club's  stock  has  soared  since  it  moved  to 
San  Francisco,  unsuccessfully  tried  to  claim  a  re- 
fund of  $117,487  which  they  said  the  city  over- 
charged them  for  taxes  in  1960. 

But  the  Giants  in  turn  are  now  being  sued  by 
a  San  Francisco  lawyer,  Mel  Belli,  who  asserts 
that  the  failure  of  the  heating  system  represents 
"a  breach  of  contract"  to  him  as  a  ticket  holder, 
and  has  caused  "extreme  discomfort"  and  thereby 
endangered  "the  health  and  well-being  of  the 
[plaintiff  and  his  guests." 

Such,  such,  are  the  joys  of  the  national  pastime 
in  the  most  easygoing  of  American  cities. 

Harper's  Magazine,  Augusl  1961 


II 


-n 


MURRAY    TEIGH    BLOOM 


YOUR  UNKNOWN  HEIRS 

how  patronage  politicians  may  take 
a  big  bite  out  of  your  estate 


A  report  on  "some  of  the  most  widespread, 

most  profitable,  and  least  known  evils 

in  our  courts"  .  .  .  and  why  the  legal  profession 

hesitates  about  cleaning  them  up. 

IN  MOST  states  of  this  Union,  a  man  or 
woman  who  dies  leaving  an  estate  where  chU- 
(hen  inherit  may  rest  uneasy  for  one  reason  at 
least:  a  big  piece  of  it  may  go— not  to  his  heirs— 
but  to  officers  appointed  by  the  probate  and  sur- 
rogate courts.  Even  if  the  children  (or  an  "incom- 
petent") are  involved  only  indirectly,  the  estate 
may  have  to  pay  this  cut. 

This  legal  system  provides  political  patronage 
for  thousands  of  the  courts'  "special  guardians" 
or  "appraisers."  Unobserved  by  the  public,  they 
are  the  last  earthly  mediators  between  the  solvent 
dead  and  their  heirs.  Every  year  overtolerant 
judges,  archaic  laws,  and  needy  political  machines 
combine  to  take  millions  silently  out  of  small  and 
large  estates.  These  persistent  pluckings  are  some 
of  the  most  widespread,  most  profitable,  and  least 
known  evils  in  our  courts. 

"Every  American  family  will  at  some  time 
come  in  contact  with  the  probate  courts,"  says 
Professor  William  J.  Pierce,  director  of  the  Legis- 
lative Research  Center  at  the  University  of  Mich- 
igan Law  School.  "Yet  these  courts  and  their 
operations  are  least  understood  by  the  American 
public  and  they  have  been  treated  as  a  stepchild 
by  the  legal  profession  generally.  As  a  result 
many  instances  of  corrupt  practices  have  arisen." 

Depending  on  the  state,  these  courts  are  called 
probate,  surrogate,  orphans,  or  chancery  courts; 
in  some  states,  superior  or  county-court  judges  do 


the  work  of  probating  estates,  a  procedure  which 
is  generally  carried  out  with  integrity.  The  Estate 
Recording  Company  of  San  Diego  estimates  that 
every  year  about  150,000  estates  of  |1 0,000  and 
over  are  filed  for  probate,  with  a  total  value  of 
$11  billion.  If  the  bite  on  these  estates  averaged 
one  per  cent,  it  would  amount  to  fllO  million. 

The  two  commonest  exactions  are  fees  for  spe- 
cial guardians  (or  guardians  ad  litem)  and  state- 
inheritance-tax  appraisers.  But  there  could  be, 
as  we  shall  see  later,  much  simpler  and  less  ex- 
pensive ways  of  accomplishing  these  ends. 

Understandably,  the  cost  is  greatest  in  the 
richer  and  more  populous  states  such  as  New 
York,  California,  Texas,  Ohio,  Illinois,  and  New 
Jersey;  but  rural  communities  in  such  states  as 
Connecticut  and  Louisiana  are  not  immune.  To 
see  how  expensive  these  wholly  legal  devices  may 
be,  let  us  look  at  some  of  the  facts. 

Manhattan's  surrogate  court  is  unquestionably 
the  richest  in  the  world.  The  two  surrogates 
handle  between  $500  million  and  |700  million  in 
estates  every  year.  When  Fiorello  La  Guardia 
was  New  York's  brilliant  reform  mayor,  he  de- 
liberately starved  Tammany  Hall  of  all  patron- 
age. Yet  the  Tammany  clubhouse  lawyers  were 
able  to  get  along  very  well  on  the  enormous 
patronage  of  the  surrogates.  La  Guardia  scath- 
ingly called  the  surrogates  court,  "the  most  ex- 
pensive undertaking  establishment  in  the  world." 

Of  course,  not  all  such  appointments  are  based 
on  political  favoritism.  Sometimes  special  guard- 
ians—and many  of  them  are  conscientious  people 
—are  necessary  to  protect  the  interests  of  children 
and  incompetents  mentioned  in  wills.  In  some 
complicated  cases,  the  service  may  require  con- 
siderable time  and  experience. 


30 


YOUR     UNKNOWN     HEIRS 


When  millionaire  sportsman  William  Wood- 
ward, Jr.  was  killed  accidentally  in  1955  he  left 
about  $10  million  equally  divided  between  his 
wife  and  two  sons.  His  will  was  skillfully  drawn 
by  some  of  the  most  expensive  legal  talent  in 
New  York,  but  under  New  York  law  the  surro- 
gates had  to  appoint  special  guardians  to  make 
certain  that  the  boys'  interests  would  be  pro- 
tected. Surrogate  William  T.  Collins  appointed 
Harold  H.  Corbin,  a  New  York  criminal  lawyer 
with  good  connections.  Mr.  Corbin's  first  task 
related  to  the  validity  of  the  will.  For  this  he 
asked  a  fee  of  |2,500;  it  was  granted  by  the  sur- 
rogate and  paid  by  the  Woodward  estate.  But 
this  was  only  the  beginning. 

In  1957,  the  surrogate  again  appointed  Corbin 
special  guardian  for  the  well-protected  Wood- 
ward boys.  And  it  appointed  another  lawyer, 
Edward  V.  Loughlin,  a  former  leader  of  Tam- 
many Hall,  as  special  guardian  for  the  young 
distant  cousins  who  might  inherit  under  certain 
remote  circumstances.  Corbin  and  Loughlin 
asked  the  surrogate  for  fees  of  $47,500  each.  The 
surrogate  cut  them,  slightly,  to  $45,000.  So  on 
the  first  round  of  special  guardianships,  the 
Woodward  estate  was  out  $92,500. 

Sometime  in  1961  there  will  be  a  final  account- 
ing on  the  estate  and  again  two  special  guardians 
will  have  to  be  appointed.  A  lawyer  familiar 
with  the  estate  tells  me  that  the  final  bite  will 
probably  be  substantial.  But,  according  to  the 
folklore  of  the  surrogate  courts,  it  would  be  far 
from  a  record-breaking  case. 

The  special  guardians  in  the  Woodward  case 
filed  affidavits  showing  they  had  put  in  many 
hours  of  work.  But  how  much  work  is  done  by 
some  others  for  their  great  fees?  Some  bank  trust 
officers  I  talked  to  estimated  that  in  similar  cases 
if  a  special  guardian  had  to  put  in  a  full  week 
protecting  the  interests  of  the  youngsters  it  was 
a  lot. 

"Most  special  guardians  try  hard  to  make  it 
appear  they're  earning  their  large  fees,"  the  late 
Professor  Thomas  Atkinson,  an  authority  on  pro- 
bate law,  told  me. 

An  experienced  bank-trust  officer  added:  "The 
special  guardian's  fee  seldom  has  any  relation 


Murray  Teigh  Bloom  has  written  several  hun- 
dred magazine  articles,  a  hook  about  counterfeiters 
("Money  of  Their  Own" ) ,  and  television  plays.  He 
is  a  founder  and  past  president  of  the  Society  of 
Magazine  Writers.  His  last  article  in  "Harper's"  was 
"Is  It  Judge  Crater's  Body?"  which  was  published 
in  November  1959. 


to  the  value  of  the  services  rendered.  In  one  case, 
a  special  guardian— a  former  city  official— came  in 
one  Friday  at  noon.  He  said,  'Let's  see  these 
four  securities  the  estate  has.  If  you  have  these 
I  assume  you  have  all  the  rest  and  besides  I  want 
to  make  the  first  race  at  Jamaica.'  At  the  most 
he  was  here  twenty  minutes  and  he  asked  for  and 
got  a  special  guardian's  fee  of  $6,000." 

Even  much  smaller  estates  are  not  immune. 
When  a  good  friend  of  mine  died  suddenly  of  a 
heart  attack  two  years  ago,  his  widow  discovered 
that  the  county  surrogate  had  appointed  a  special 
guardian  to  protect  the  interests  of  her  two 
teen-age  sons.  The  guardian,  a  minor  political 
figure,  visited  one  Saturday  afternoon  and  asked 
her  to  call  in  her  sons. 

"Boys,"  he  said,  "I  know  you  want  to  be  play- 
ing outside,  so  I  won't  waste  your  time.  Tell 
me:  when  your  father  made  out  his  will  in  De- 
cember 1956,  was  he  sane?" 

"Of  course,  he  was,"  the  older  boy  burst  out, 
"What's  the  matter  with  you,  anyway?" 

The  special  guardian  said:  "Don't  get  excited, 
boys.   That's  all  I  have  to  know." 

He  later  phoned  the  two  witnesses  to  the  will, 
then  filed  a  brief  report,  and  put  in  a  claim  for  a 
special  guardian's  fee  of  $380.  He  got  it.  He 
was  paid  out  of  the  estate  which  totaled  less 
than  $25,000.  As  far  as  I  can  figure  it,  the  lawyer 
put  in  two  hours  on  his  simple,  routine  task,  at 
$190  per  hour. 

MANHATTAN     IS     REASONABLE 

CLEARLY  it  is  smart  for  lawyers  to  be 
friendly  with  the  local  surrogates,  but 
friendship  is  not  enough.  In  1952,  Bert  Stand, 
secretary  of  Tammany  Hall,  told  the  New  York 
State  Crime  Commission,  then  probing  the  ties 
between  the  courts  and  politicians,  how  the  sys- 
tem worked.  Each  Tammany  district  leader,  he 
said,  "would  submit  to  the  county  organization  a 
list  of  his  lawyers  .  .  .  and  we,  in  turn,  would 
make  up  a  list  proportionately  as  best  we  knew 
how  and  submit  it  to  the  judges  .  .  .  that  might 
have  some  patronage  to  give  out." 

Stand  could  only  recall  one  instance  in  which 
a  judge  refused  the  list  and  returned  it  to  Tam- 
many. According  to  the  Canons  of  Judicial  Ethics 
of  the  American  Bar  Association,  this  rare  judge 
did  the  right  thing.  When  a  judge  appoints  per- 
sons to  aid  him  in  the  administration  of  justice, 
says  Canon  12,  "he  should  not  permit  his  ap- 
pointments to  be  controlled  by  others  than  him- 
self. He  should  also  avoid  nepotism  and  undue 
favoritism  in  his  appointments." 


BY     MURRAY     TEIGH     BLOOM 


31 


A  great  lavoiite  of  Manhaiian's  surrogates  is 
Edward  V.  Loughlin,  mentionetl  above  in  the 
Woodward  case.  In  the  first  few  months  of  1960 
Mr.  Loughlin  was  appointed  special  guardian  in 
three  large  estates  valued  at  .$21  million.  Until 
recently  all  special  guardianshij^s  in  Manhattan 
had  to  be  listed  every  Monday  in  the  Nexo  York 
Law  Journal.  But  in  March  1960  a  bill  was 
quietly  passed  by  the  New  York  State  Legislature 
that  ended  this  sixty-four-year-old  requirement. 
Now  investigators  will  find  it  much  more  difficult 
to  find  out  which  political  fa\'orites  get  heavy 
jjatronagc. 

When  I  mentioned  the  high  sj^ecial-guardian 
fees  awarded  in  Manhattan,  Surrogate  Joseph  A. 
Cox  said:  "You  think  they're  high  here?  Why, 
we're  reasonable  in  Manhattan.  In  other  bor- 
oughs they're  outrageous  and  upstate  fees  are 
very  high,  too."  Several  trust-company  officers 
confirmed  this.  "Just  don't  die  in  Brooklyn  or 
in  Nassau  or  Suffolk  Counties  and  leave  money 
to  children  under  twenty-one,"  one  of  them  said. 
"Those  special  guardians  out  there  will  rip 
through  your  estate  like  a  small  tornado." 

Why  don't  trust  companies  and  executors  pro- 
test the  exactions  of  grasping  special  guardians? 
"How  can  we?"  one  of  them  asked  me.  "We  have 
to  deal  with  surrogates,  day  in,  day  out.  If  we 
antagonize  them  by  protesting  the  size  of  these 
fees,  some  surrogate  will  find  lots  of  ways  of 
showing  displeasure.  We're  sitting  ducks."  He 
shook  his  head.  "Say  one  day  you  finally  decide 
to  fight  the  system.  So  the  special  guardian  takes 
you  aside  and  says,  'Look,  buster,  if  you  don't 
pay  my  fee  without  a  fuss  I'll  keep  this  estate  tied 
up  with  objections  for  the  next  ten  years.'  And 
he  could,  too." 

In  Massachusetts,  where  many  estates  are 
neatly  nicked  by  both  guardians  and  appraisers, 
several  lawyers  said  the  situation  was  out  of  hand. 
But  not  one  would  let  me  use  his  name  or  even 
protest  the  outsize  fees  in  court.  A  leading  Bos- 
ton attorney  explained:  "The  judge  would  look 
down  his  nose  at  me  and  say,  'What's  wrong  with 
the  fee?'  and  I'd  be  dead.  I  might  just  as  well 
get  out  of  the  law,  because  I'd  be  through  here." 
However,  this  April,  W^alter  I.  Badger,  Jr.,  presi- 
dent of  the  Boston  Bar  Association,  commented 
in  its  Journal  on  "the  unfortunate,  if  not  down- 
right unethical  situations"  developing  in  many 
counties:  "The  public  is  being  dej^rived  of  'the 
absolute  confidence  in  the  integrity  and  impar- 
tiality' in  the  probate  administration  to  which  it 
is  entitled." 

Before  his  death  in  1960,  I  discussed  special 
guardians  with   Professor   Thomas   Atkinson   of 


New  York  University  School  of  Law.  "I  used  to 
tell  probate  judges  they  ought  to  have  a  little  sign 
in  their  chambers:  'Is  this  special  guardianship 
necessary?'  But  obviously  my  suggestion  hasn't 
been  heeded,"  he  said.  "Most  of  the  special 
guardians  appointed  today  are  unnecessary  and 
serve  no  useful  function.  But  because  there  is 
an  enormous  amount  of  patronage  involved  it 
is  going  to  be  very  hard  to  end  this  system.  An 
investigation  is  long  overdue  on  this  abuse." 

Professor  Atkinson  suggested  that  our  courts 
study  the  Canadian  system.  There  a  full-time 
public  official  acts  as  Official  Guardian  in  behalf 
of  minors  mentioned  in  wills.  He  gets  fixed  and 
very  nominal  fees  for  his  work. 

IS     IT     BETTER     TO     DIE 
IN     CALIFORNIA  ? 

IN  California,  where  the  courts  seldom  find  it 
necessary  to  appoint  fat-fee  special  guardians, 
the  preferred  method  is  the  inheritance-tax-ap- 
praiser fee.  The  man  named  "appraiser"  by  the 
State  Controller,  gets  a  percentage  of  the  total 
estate.  The  San  Francisco  Chronicle  has  called 
this  "the  last  vestige  of  the  spoils  system  in 
California." 

How  impressive  the  fees  are  can  be  judged 
from  a  survey  made  by  State  Controller  Alan 
Cranston  when  he  took  office  in  1959.  Democrat 
Cranston  wanted  to  know  just  how  much  the 
Republican-appointed  appraisers  he  inherited 
had  been  making  at  their  jobs.  He  asked  all  state 
appraisers  to  file  earnings  statements.  All  of  them 
work  at  state  appraising  part-time;  their  real 
work  is  law,  insurance,  or  real  estate. 

Herman  A.  Bischoff,  a  prominent  San  Diego 
Republican,  reported  that  his  appraiser  fees, 
taken  out  of  estates  he  valuated  for  state-inheri- 
tance-tax purposes,  came  to  333,000  for  the  first 
six  months  of  1959.  For  part-time  work  he  made 
more  than  the  Governor,  who  works  full-time 
and  gets  S40,000  a  year.  In  California  only  eleven 
state  executives  draw  $20,000  a  year  or  more.  In 
Alameda  County,  Hugo  P.  Correll,  another 
prominent  Republican,  made  |23,040  in  his  first 
six  months  as  part-time  state  appraiser. 

When  Cranston  camjxiigned  for  the  Control- 
ler's job,  according  to  the  San  Francisco  Chroni- 
cle, he  said  he  was  in  favor  of  putting  the  ap- 
praiser jobs  under  civil  service.  After  he  was 
elected  he  found  that  this  would  cost  too  much. 
And  he  proceeded  to  give  some  oi  the  jobs  to 
good  Democrats  such  as  Thomas  E.  Feeney,  who 
had  been  active  in  his  camjxiign,  and  to  A. 
Brooks  Berlin,  the  San  Francisco  campaign  man- 


32  YOUR     UNKNOWN      HEIRS 


ager  for  Governor  Brown.  Of  the  141  state 
appraisers,  112  are  Democrats  and  29  Republi- 
cans. However,  Cranston  has  reorganized  the 
system  so  that  it  is  unlikely  that  an  appraiser  can 
make  more  than  $20,000  a  year. 

What  does  the  appraiser  do? 

"In  most  cases,"  an  experienced  California 
judge  told  me,  "it's  just  a  matter  of  sitting  down 
to  check  the  value  of  the  estate's  stocks  and 
bonds  in  the  Wall  Street  Journal.  Some  of 
them  don't  even  do  that  but  simply  approve  the 
appraisals  already  made  by  the  bank  or  trust 
company  handling  the  estate.  But  if  they  have  a 
real  problem,  they're  allowed  to  bring  in  pro- 
fessional appraisers  on  a  per-diem  basis.  To 
make  things  sweeter,  appraisers  can  also  get  a 
nice  little  allowance  for  their  'clerical'  help.  All 
this,  of  course,  comes  out  of  the  estates  being 
'appraised.'  The  whole  appraisal  business  makes 
no  sense  here." 

As  if  the  appraiser  exactions  weren't  enough, 
during  the  1950s  several  clerks  of  the  San  Fran- 
cisco probate  court  thought  up  another  way  of 
taking  even  more  out  of  estates.  Under  Cali- 
fornia probate  law,  "anyone  interested  in  the 
estate"  could  request  the  appointment  of  two 
extra  appraisers,  each  to  receive  the  regular  fee. 
In  1958  a  state  legislative  committee  investiga- 
tion found  that: 

About  fifty  court  attaches  or  judges'  friends 
took  part  in  this  extra-appraisal  system.  They 
had  little  or  no  competence  in  appraising  and 
did  little  more  than  sign  their  names  to  docu- 
ments prepared  by  the  state  appraisers.  And  most 
extra  appraisers  kicked  back  half  of  their  fees  to 
the  clerk  of  the  judge  appointing  them.  A 
probate-court  clerk  admitted  getting  $30,258  in 
these  kickbacks  in  a  five-year  period. 

Why  should  a  lawyer  for  an  estate  want  to  add 
the  expense  of  the  unnecessary  extra  appraisers? 
Said  the  committee  report:  "The  suggestion  that 
he  [the  lawyer]  request  extra  appraisers  usually 
came  from  the  clerk  of  the  probate  court.  Since 
the  clerk  generally  has  working  control  over  the 
court  calendar,  he  is  in  a  position  to  see  that 
attorneys  have  their  cases  called  soon  after  court 
opens  ...  or  if  the  clerk  were  so  minded  he 
could  keep  an  attorney  cooling  his  heels  all  day 
waiting  for  his  case  to  be  called." 

Or  as  one  San  Francisco  attorney  put  it: 
"Fither  you  let  him  nick  the  estate  for  a  few 
hundred  bucks  or  your  case  gets  lost." 

The  extraordinary  power  of  the  probate-(f)urt 
rlerk  was  illustrated  in  Chicago  in  1952.  There, 
a  C;hi(ago  Sun-Times  exposed-  disclosed  that  deik 
Jf)liri  W.  Tauchen  decided  the  aj)))oininu'nls  of 


691  guardianships  in  a  nine-month  period.  Of 
these  about  40  per  cent  went  to  four  of  Tauchen's 
political  cronies.  One  of  them  got  76  guardian- 
ships in  that  period,  or  about  two  a  week.  The 
Chicago  Bar  Association  investigated,  and  al- 
though it  said  that  political  appointments  of 
guardians  was  improper  and  that  "certain  unde- 
sirable practices"  had  grown  up  in  the  probate 
court,  it  concluded  that  Mr.  Tauchen  had  been 
an  "efficient"  clerk. 

EVEN  REFORMERS 
HAVE  DEBTS 

EVERY  few  years  movements  start  up  here 
and  there  throughout  the  country  to  reform 
the  probate  system.  But  somehow  they  don't  get 
very  far.  In  the  state  of  Washington,  for  exam- 
ple, three  appraisers  must  be  appointed  in  every 
estate.  A  prominent  Seattle  attorney  told  me 
why  efforts  to  replace  them  with  paid  state  em- 
ployees fail  in  the  legislature. 

"The  opposition  always  comes  from  politicians 
who  like  a  convenient  way  of  paying  political 
debts.  The  party  in  power,  be  it  Democratic  or 
Republican,  likes  to  supply  the  Tax  Commission 
with  the  names  of  faithful  party  workers  who 
should  be  remembered  when  there  are  estates  to 
be  appraised.  The  'outs'?  Well,  they  look  for- 
ward to  the  day  when  they  will  control  the  state 
government  and  will  want  to  pay  oflF  party 
workers.  .A.fter  all,  it's  painless.  It's  a  dead  man's 
money.    Who's  going  to  raise  a  fuss?" 

In  Minnesota  I  was  surprised  to  find  that  the 
appraisal  system  had  not  gotten  any  adverse 
newspaper  publicity.  A  leading  Minneapolis  at- 
torney, whose  firm  handles  some  of  the  largest 
estates  in  Minnesota,  explained:  "Why  should 
anyone  expose  the  system?  Check  out  the  men 
and  women  who  get  these  juicy  little  appraiser 
fees  for  no  work  and  who  will  you  find?  State 
legislators,  attorneys  with  political  connections, 
politicians,  and  newspaper  reporters.  None  of 
them  is  likely  to  be  interested  in  changing  a  sys- 
tem that  gives  them  this  fine  extra  income  every 
year." 

Even  ardent  reformers  who  set  out  to  reform 
the  system  seem  to  lose  their  zeal  after  a  while. 
In  one  large  city  a  lawyer  running  for  siuroo^ate 
based  his  campaign  on  the  fact  that  the  court, 
originally  set  up  to  protect  widows  and  or))hans, 
was  actually  milking  their  estates.  He  researched 
court  records  and  in  campaign  talks  ho  told 
vhirli  |)()h'ii(  ians  were  milking  xoJiidi  estates  for 
liow  much.    He  was  not  elected. 

Not  long  ago  I  plioned  this  man  and  asked  if 


I; 


■i 


i 


BY     MURRAY     TEIGH     BLOOM 


33 


he  could  let  me  have  some  of  the  data  he  had  un- 
earthed duiing  his  campaign.  He  was  obviously 
embarrassed.  With  a  forced  laugh  he  admitted 
that  he  had  since  benefited  from  some  good 
special-guardian  appointments.  "The  way  I  look 
at  it  now,"  he  said,  "is  this:  here's  a  lot  of  money 
u[)  for  grabs.  The  heirs  who  are  going  to  get 
it  don't  deserve  it.  Hell,  they  didn't  work  for  it. 
So  I  have  no  hesitation  in  asking  a  large  fee  as 
a  special  guardian.  Nothing  wrong  with  that,  is 
there?" 

His  current  attitude  is  rather  like  that  of 
several  Democratic  and  Republican  leaders  I 
sjK)ke  to  in  diflerent  cities.  They  regard  probate- 
court  patronage  as  an  important  means  for  re- 
warding the  party  faithful.  But  none  of  the  party 
leaders  would  answer  a  question  I  asked:  What 
part  of  the  special  guardian  or  appraiser  fee  finds 
its  way  back  into  the  party  coffers? 

In  California  a  state  legislative  aide  who  took 
part  in  the  San  Francisco  investigation  told  me: 
"Some  appraisers  have  to  make  generous  contri- 
butions to  their  party.   No  question  of  that." 

In  New  York  a  retired  lawyer  recalled  for  me 
the  times  when  he  made  $5,000  to  $6,000  a  year 
as  a  special  guardian.  "The  Democratic  county 
organization  had  a  complete  record  of  what  I  got 
out  of  patronage  because  at  the  end  of  the  year, 
usually  at  campaign  time,  I  would  get  a  call  and 
be  reminded  that  I  was  expected  to  kick  in.  It 
\vas  understood  that  the  contribution  to  the 
county  committee  was  15  per  cent  of  the  fees. 
HoAvever,  there  were  additional  payments:  you 
had  to  contribute  to  your  own  club,  and  somehow 
word  got  around  that  your  club  leader  was  a 
regular  guy  and  would  be  pleased  if  you  handed 
him  S25  now  and  then,  in  cash,  as  a  token  of  your 
appreciation.  So  that  to  keep  in  good  all  around 
you  would  be  handing  back  anywhere  from  a 
third  to  40  per  cent  of  what  you  got.  But  since 
you  did  almost  nothing  for  what  you  kept,  no- 
body objected  too  much.  I  went  back  to  my  old 
neighborhood  recently  and  found  that  things 
hadn't  changed.  The  special  guardian  fees  are 
higher  now— a  few  of  them  run  to  as  much  as  10 
per  cent  of  the  total  estate— but  you're  still  ex- 
pected to  kick  back  about  a  third  to  the  party." 

CONFUSION,     INC. 

TH  E  freebooting  atmosphere  in  some  pro- 
bate courts  where  favored  lawyers  and 
clerks  are  legally  permitted  to  dip  with  both 
hands  into  estates  is  bound  to  affect  other  civil 
servants  in  and  around  these  courts.  Two  scan- 
dals early  in  1960  illustrate  this: 


In  Illinois,  law  required  a  representative  of 
the  State  Treasurer's  office  to  be  present  when 
the  safe-deposit  box  of  a  dead  man  was  opened. 
In  1960  it  was  charged  that  state  examiners  stole 
cash  and  securities  from  such  boxes  by  distract- 
ing family  representatives  who  were  present  when 
the  boxes  were  opened.  Over  several  months^  it 
was  said,  they  had  stolen  more  than  $40,000. 

In  Los  Angeles,  Philip  A.  Adkins,  chief  deputv 
in  the  Public  Administrator's  office  was  found 
guilty,  with  two  others,  of  looting  nearly  $60,000 
in  unclaimed  estates  in  the  custody  of  the  Public 
Administrator. 

Reforming  our  probate  courts  and  changing 
the  "anything  goes"  atmosphere  will  not  be  easy. 
In  nearly  half  the  states  the  probate  judge  is  not 
even  required  to  be  trained  in  the  law.  "In 
many  counties,"  Professor  Pierce  of  the  Univer- 
sity of  Michigan  Law  School  told  me,  "because 
of  defects  in  probate  court  orders  by  non-lawyers, 
land  titles  are  in  a  state  of  confusion.  Future 
generations  will  have  to  engage  in  considerable 
litigation  in  order  to  clear  those  titles  and  make 
those  properties  marketable." 

In  Connecticut,  attempts  to  reorganize  and  re- 
form the  state's  123  probate  courts  have  been 
stymied  by  the  powerful  probate  judges'  lobby. 
As  the  League  of  Women  Voters  of  Connecticut 
points  out,  "the  present  system  provides  for  a 
multitude  of  fees  which  are  paid  piecemeal  at 
so  many  different  stages  of  the  probate  process 
that  it  tends  to  create  a  vested  interest  in  com- 
plicated procedures." 

In  New  York  State,  court-reform  forces  had  to 
agree  to  exclude  the  surrogate  court  before  a 
measure  embodying  consolidation  of  the  state's 
1,500  scattered  courts  was  accepted  by  the  legis- 
lature. Politicians  of  both  parties  admitted  that 
in  a  thorough  reform  the  surrogates  woidd  have 
to  be  deprived  of  full  control  over  the  enormous 
patronage  of  their  courts. 

"The  vast  majority  of  lawyers  and  judges  in 
the  United  States  recognize  the  need  for  basic 
reform  in  our  probate  courts,"  Professor  Pierce 
told  me.  "But  few  lawyers  and  fewer  judges  are 
willing  or  have  the  courage  to  speak  out. 

"That  means  it  is  going  to  be  up  to  the  public 
to  make  the  start.  The  way  to  begin  is  for  each 
community  to  take  a  good,  long  look  at  what  goes 
on  in  the  local  probate  court.  Sooner  or  later 
some  of  your  family's  money  will  be  involved. 
It's  time  we  found  out  just  what  part  of  the 
billions  going  through  these  courts  sticks  to  the 
fingers  of  politicians  and  court  appointees.  Then 
we  must  find  a  way  to  jjut  an  end  to  this  legal 
extortion." 

Harper's  Magnzmc,  August  1961 


Robinson  Crusoe  in  Florida 


By    JAN    DE    HARTOG 

Drawings  by  Gil  Walker 


TO  G  E  T  the  true  impression  of  the  conti- 
nent of  America,  one  should  not  land  from 
boat  or  plane,  nor  cross  the  border  by  train  or 
automobile,  or  even  on  foot. 

One  should  wade  ashore,  like  Robinson  Crusoe, 
through  the  lazy  sinf  of  the  Gulf  of  Mexico  and 
arrive  on  Florida's  prehistoric  and  eternally 
youthful  beach.  The  jungle  fringe  aroinid  that 
big  blue  water  never  has  time  to  grow  up  into 
maturity— every  thirty  years  or  so  a  hurricane- 
lashed  tidal  wave  shears  all  vegetation  off  the 
low'-lying  land  except  the  mangroves;  so  the 
human  wading  out  of  the  sea  will  not  confront  a 
rioting  jungle,  but  the  aftermath  of  a  disaster. 

This  is  America:  the  eternal  impermanence 
of  any  living  being,  be  it  plant,  beast,  or  man, 
under  the  linking  menace  of  cosmic  fones  about 
to  raze  the  table  of  (reation  once  more.  And 
what  is  newly  created  after  the  catastrf)phe  is  but 
the  image  of  what  went  l)efore:  the  neutral  ado- 
lescent groivth  of  green  and  flesh,  living  in  con- 
siani  aivarencss  of  ilic  ( loiids  ol  fury  gathering 
again  be)oiid  the  hori/on. 


Nowhere  on  these  shores,  or  even  in  the  plains 
and  the  valleys  beyond,  has  man  imposed  his  will 
with  any  semblance  of  permanence.  No  conti- 
nent on  earth  has  higher  towers,  longer  bridges, 
bigger  dams;  yet  they  fail  to  impress  man  as 
monuments  of  his  might.  For  even  the  firecracker 
of  his  atom  bomb  is  put  to  ridicule  by  the  black 
vortex  of  the  tornado  reaching  tip  into  the  sky, 
and  by  the  colossal  thunder  of  the  subtropic 
lowlands,  the  tidal  waves  that  crumble  houses 
and  turn  the  roofs  of  churches  to  flotsam. 

America,  when  approached  from  the  sea,  on 
foot,  alone,  shows  itself  in  its  true  nature  as  the 
New  World.  Although  it  is  as  old  as  the  rest  of 
the  earth,  it  is  unlike  any  world  man  has  known 
and  conquered  so  far.  It  is  unconquercd,  and 
will  remain  so  iiniil  man  has  found  a  new  rela- 
tionship, a  new  humility,  and  a  new  might  by  a 
total  conversion.  In  this  land  of  hostile  nature, 
of  twisters,  luirricanes,  poison  oak  and  jjoison  ivy, 
where  each  holi<lay  may  end  in  deaili,  eacli  boat- 
ride  in  disiisicr.  ea(  h  nature-ramble  in  poisoned 
agony,  m.in  needs  another  (iod  than  the  one  he 


I 


.. 


35 


tamed  in  the  old  country,  where  the  Holy  Ghost 
is  safely  locked  up  in  spired  prisons,  garlanded 
with  ageless  art. 

In  the  heart  of  Florida  is  a  large,  mysterious 
lake  which  a  hurricane  turns  into  a  seething 
cauldron  of  destruction,  and  which  between  these 
cosmic  spasms  lies  shimmering  in  a  silver  haze.  It 
is  now  called  Lake  Okeechobee,  Big  Water,  but 
the  Spaniards  when  they  first  arrived  gave  the 
unexplored  swamp  of  which  the  lake  was  part  the 
name  "Lake  of  the  Holy  Ghost."  Although 
the  name  of  the  lake  has  changed,  the  Spirit  still 
moves  upon  its  waters,  and  nature  lies  waiting  for 
its  liberation  from  fear  in  the  soul  of  a  new,  still 
uncreated  man. 

Soiaids  of  a  Moonlit  Night 

A  moonlit  summei"  night  on  Florida's  West 
Coast  is  different  from  anywhere  else  in  the 
world.  Full  moon  in  the  Far  East,  when  it  rises 
large  and  green  out  of  the  scented  jjrofusion  of 
the  jungle,  is  a  magical  occurrence.  It  seems 
there  as  if  the  animal  kingdom  down  to  the 
smallest  marauders  of  the  night  are  blessed,  dur- 
ing a  few  fleeting  hours,  with  a  human  individ- 
uality. The  moonlit  garden  sings,  warbles, 
laughs,  and  patters  with  feverish  joy,  and  the 
listener  to  this  Midstmimer  Night's  Dream  is 
overcome  by  a  feeling  of  elation.  The  rustling, 
leaping,  laughing,  and  applauding  around  him 
fill  him  with  hope;  it  seems  as  if  the  animals 
were  lifted  out  of  their  fearsome  darkness  by  the 
touch  of  a  magic  wand  and  allowed  to  perceive, 
darkly,  the  light  of  consciousness  at  the  end  of 
evolution. 

The  Florida  jungle,  recently  regrown  after  the 
last  hurricane's  destruction,  has  a  different  at- 
mosphere. As  the  moon  rises,  pale  and  distant, 
over  the  undergrowth  without  trees  or  flowers, 
the  young  wilderness  is  heard  to  awaken.  The 
first  sound  is  a  distant  bleating,  as  if  a  herd  of 
goats  came  wandering  near  through  the  shrubs. 
But  they  are  not  goats  dreaming  to  be  men,  they 
are  frogs  dreaming  to  be  goats,  and  as  the  moon 
rises  higher,  there  rise  with  it  other  sounds  in 
the  eerie  night,  sounds  that  seem  elementary, 
the  sound  of  life  awakening  in  matter.  The 
close-cropped  shrubs,  the  shorn  mangroves,  the 
crippled  palms  are  given  voice,  and  what  they 
express  is  not  hope,  but  terror. 

It  is  not  the  terror  of  evil,  nor  the  ancient 
terror  of  the  hunted  prey  in  the  shadowless 
moonlight.  It  is  basest  nature  squeaking,  squeal- 
ing, lowing,  and  bleating  in  an  agony  of  birth, 
and  what  terrifies  man  in  this  cauldron  of  cre- 
ation is  the  knowledge  of  what  is  to  come.    For 


in   the   Florida   jungle   on    the   Gulf   of   Mexico 
the  Great  Flood  is  still  in  the  future. 

After  the  shutters  are  closed  and  the  lamp  is 
lit,  the  spell  does  not  abate.  Man  stands  lonely 
in  his  cabin,  listening,  and  he  knows  with  pre- 
historic intuition  that  in  the  darkness  of  eons 
to  come  there  is  another  disaster,  \\aiting  for 
this  planet  Earth  to  swing,  blindly,  into  its 
rising  tide. 

The  Waters  of  Venice 

On  my  walks  along  the  beach  and  through  the 
houseless  streets  of  South  Venice,  I  saw  many 
small  openings  in  the  jungle  which,  on  close  in- 
spection, turned  out  to  be  little  waterways.  In 
the  end,  the  temptation  to  explore  them  became 
so  great  that  I  procured  a  canoe,  which  could  be 
strapped  on  the  roof  of  the  second-hand  car 
I  had  bought,  and  set  out  to  investigate. 

I  unstrapped  the  canoe,  carried  it  down  the 
bank,  got  in,  and  after  two  strokes  of  the  paddle 
I  hesitated.  Within  a  matter  of  seconds  I  had 
slid  silently  from  the  familiar  reality  of  the 
present  into  a  timeless  no-man's-land,  where 
past  and  future  were  one.  The  jungle  on  the 
banks  of  the  narrow  winding  stream  was  not 
in  itself  surprising  or  exciting;  there  was  just 
the  unshakable  certainty,  which  had  assailed  me 
from  nowhere,  that  I  was  the  first  man  ever  to 
visit  this  corner  of  the  wilderness. 

Of  course  this  was  nonsense,  I  thought.  Hun- 
dreds of  people,  over  the  centuries,  must  have 
wandered  into  these  narrow  backwaters  of  "^V^est 
Florida,  even  when  it  was  still  called  something 
else.  And  then  I  realized  what  had  suddenly 
thrown  its  spell  over  me:  the  undving  awe  of 
those  earlier  visitors,  still  hovering  between  the 
banks  of  the  little  stream,  undisturbed  by  human 
traffic.  As  noiselessly  I  drifted  deeper  into  this 
miniature  maze,  I  felt  as  if  I  were  growina:  big- 
ger, for  the  shrubs  became  lower  and  the  little 


Since  boyhood,  Jan  de  Hortog,  Dutch  novelist 
and  playtvright,  has  been  fascinated  by  the  sea.  He 
ran  away  at  ten  and  sailed  with  a  fishing  smack 
on  the  Zuider  Zee;  after  the  war,  he  bought  a 
venerable  sailboat  and  used  her  extensively  in 
European  waters,  then  shipped  her  by  freighter  to 
the  Gulf  Coast  of  the  JJ .  S.  A.  and  explored  the 
coastal  waters  from  Houston  to  Florida  and  across 
the  peninsula  through  the  heart  of  the  Everglades. 
This  report  is  part  of  his  new  book.  "Waters  of  the 
New  World,"  to  be  published  by  Atheneum  in 
October.  Mr.  de  Hartogs  earlier  books  include 
"The  Fourposter."  a  play,  and  the  novels,  "The 
Lost  Sea,"  and  "The  Inspector." 


36 


ROBINSON     CRUSOE     IN     FLORIDA 


stream  narrower.  It  began  to  dawn  on  me  that 
my  predecessors  had  been  young  boys;  no  man 
in  his  senses  would  waste  his  time  worming  his 
way  into  this  rabbit  warren  of  muddy  water  and 
overheated  shrub,  for  no  animal  of  any  value 
would  hide  itself  here,  and  fish  could  better  be 
caught  in  the  bay  where  they  had  room  to  grow. 
This  was  a  world  of  useless  newts,  inedible  coots 
and  tadpoles  that  fascinate  only  their  equals  in 
the  family  of  man.  As  the  stream  became  too 
narrow,  even  for  the  canoe,  I  wanted  to  get  out 
and  wade  on,  as  the  boys  must  have  done.  But 
the  moment  I  stood  up  the  charm  broke,  for  I 
was  a  giant  looking  out  over  a  children's  jungle, 
feeling  foolish.  So  I  sat  down  again  facing  the 
other  way  in  the  canoe  which,  luckily,  was  not 
particular  about  stem  or  stern. 

As  I  slowly  poled  my  way  back  to  my  age,  I 
felt  a  strange  elation.  It  had  nothing  to  do  with 
memories  of  my  own  boyhood,  nor  with  the 
future;  it  had  to  do  with  what  I  had  felt  the 
moment  I  penetrated  into  this  small  secret  world 
of  childhood,  playing  at  explorer,  perhaps  for 
the  last  time  in  my  life. 

Sam  Brown's  Trading  Post 

The  great  wilderness  of  water,  saw  grass,  and 
clouds  called  the  Everglades  is  one  of  the  last 
really  wild  territories  in  the  United  States.  The 
only  way  to  penetrate  into  its  heart  is  in  a  cum- 
bersome vehicle  called  a  swamp-buggy,  which 
is  usually  constructed  by  its  owner. 

The  buggy  in  which  my  American  friend  and 
I  set  out  on  our  expedition  to  explore  the  sea 
of  grass  had  been  built  by  our  guide.  It  was  an 
old  Ford  Model-A  on  airplane  tires,  with  snow- 
chains  to  grip  the  mud;  and  perched  on  top  of 
this  contraption,  lurching  and  swaying  as  on  an 
elephant,  we  bounded  down  the  new  road  to- 
ward the  wilderness  on  the  first  day  of  our  jour- 
ney. The  Seminole  Indian  workmen  building 
the  road  looked  incongruous  in  the  American 
laborer's  uniform  of  khaki  pants  and  khaki  shirt, 
and  they  were  led  by  a  red-faced  white  super- 
visor who  was  very  hot.  Two  Indians  lurched 
about  on  a  couple  of  gigantic  snorting  bull- 
dozers, painted  yellow,  that  pushed  carloads  of 
sand  in  front  of  them  into  the  marsh  for  the 
continuation  of  the  road.  There  was  sand  every- 
where along  the  track  and  broken  young  trees 
and  lethal  coils  of  rusty  old  barbed  wire,  hist 
remnants  of  forgotten  claims,  now  uprooted  by 
the  proud  Indians  on  their  mechanical  monsters. 

"We'll  stoj)  here,"  our  guide  said;  "I  want  to 
show  you  the  monument."  My  friend  asked, 
"Monument?"  and   the  guide   told   us   that   this 


was  the  spot  where  Sam  Brown's  Trading  Post 
had  been,  subject  of  countless  ballads  and  camp- 
fire  stories  among  the  Indians  and  the  trappers 
of  the  Everglades.  It  had  been  a  true  outpost  to 
progress;  here  the  Indians  had  brought  their 
wares  to  barter  for  guns,  alcohol,  and  patent 
medicine.  Here  the  first  Bibles  had  been  handed 
out  to  them  free  with  their  month's  shopping, 
and  from  here  the  first  missionary  had  set  out 
into  the  jungle,  never  to  return.  Some  people 
said  the  missionary  had  settled  on  a  hammock 
in  the  heart  of  the  marsh,  forgetting  about  con- 
verting other  people  once  he  was  faced,  like 
Jacob,  with  God  in  the  wilderness.  Others  said 
he  had  been  killed  by  the  Indians,  or  escaped 
convicts,  but  our  guide  himself  thought  he  had 
probably  crossed  the  Everglades  and  come  out 
at  the  other  end,  without  having  met  anybody, 
and  gone  elsewhere  on  his  search  for  souls.  We 
were,  so  the  guide  said  with  an  odd  reverence 
for  so  matter-of-fact  a  man,  standing  on  hallowed 
ground.  Sam  Brown's  Trading  Post  had  domi- 
nated this  gateway  to  the  Everglades  for  over 
half  a  century;  it  had  been  burned  down  and  re- 
built, besieged  and  relieved,  shots  had  rung  out 
and  hymns  had  been  sung,  and  from  the  eucalyp- 
tus tree  in  the  shade  of  which  evangelists  had 
healed  the  sick,  many  a  man  had  been  lynched 
by  ranchers  whose  cattle  had  vanished  in  the 
wilderness.  This  had  been  the  dawn  of  America, 
and  it  was  fitting  that  a  monument  had  been 
erected  to  mark  the  site. 

We  got  down  and  looked  around  for  the  monu- 
ment; there  was  nothing  to  be  seen  but  the  man- 
grove shrubs  damaged  by  the  bulldozers,  the 
soggy  sand  of  the  new  road,  the  coils  of  old 
barbed  wire  and  the  Indians  and  their  machines, 
thrusting  and  rearing  in  their  slow,  proud  joust- 
ing match. 

"What  are  you  guys  looking  for?"  the  sweating 
foreman  asked  as  he  saw  us  rummage  in  the 
shrubs. 

"A  monument,"  we  said,  with  an  ingratiating 
smile  because  the  supervisor  looked  sorely  tried. 

"Monument?"  he  said.  "You  don't  mean  the 
bit  of  stone  with  the  disk  on  top?" 

We  said  we  didn't  know.  All  we  knew  was  that 
somewhere  around  here,  there  should  be  a  monu- 
ment to  Sam  Brown's  Trading  Post. 

"Sam  who?"  the  supervisor  asked  in  an  alarm- 
ing effort  to  be  jocular.  Then  our  guide  came 
back  from  the  shrubs  with  his  machete  and  he 
obviously  made  the  same  impression  on  the  super- 
visoi  that  the  supervisor  had  made  on  us. 

"Where  is  the  monument,  you  lousy  sand- 
pusher?"  he  asked. 


BY     JAN     DE     HARTOG 


37 


"How  would  I  know?"  the  supervisor  replied, 
a  small  helpless  cog  in  the  vast  machine  ol 
bureaucracy.  "Nobody's  told  me  anything  about 
a  monument.  I  did  find  a  bit  of  stone  with  a 
metal  disk  on  top  but  ..." 

"That's  it!"  the  guide  said.  "Where  is  it?  If 
you  have  knocked  the  thing  over  ..." 

"Hell,  no,"  the  supervisor  cried.  "I  ain't 
knocked  nothing  over.    It's  right  there.    It  ...  " 

"Look  out!"  my  friend  cried,  and  just  in  time, 
for  the  supervisor  had  almost  thrown  himself  in 
front  of  one  of  his  bulldozers  as  he  scurried  across 
the  road.  He  darted  aside,  shook  both  fists  at  the 
Indian  high  above  him,  who  ignored  him  and 
swung  his  monster  round  with  power  and  pride. 

"Here  it  is!"  the  supervisor's  voice  called  across 
the  white  sand.  "Right  here!"  We  waded  to- 
ward him,  and  found  him  hastily  dusting  some- 
thing with  his  rolled-up  shirt. 

It  was  the  lowest  monument  I  have  ever  seen, 
a  milestone  with  a  brass  disk  riveted  on  top  of 
it.  In  the  disk  had  been  hammered,  with  irregu- 
lar letters,  "This  is  the  site  of  Sam  Broivn's  fa- 
mous Trading  Post  xuhere  .  .  .  "  The  next  few 
lines  were  illegible  because  of  a  recent  scratch 
made  with  a  very  big  instrument,  and  the  last 
line  ended  with,  ".  .  .  bless  America." 

While  the  guide  and  the  supervisor  had  words, 
my  friend  photographed  the  monument  before  it 
became  part  of  the  new  road  into  nowhere. 

Only  much  later,  in  the  heart  of  the  wilder- 
ness, did  we  realize  what  the  real  monument  had 
been:  the  white  road  being  born,  the  Indians 
on  their  bulldozers,  proudly  pushing  their  way 
into  the  haunt  of  ghosts  -where  their  ancestors 
were  waiting.    If  the  monument  of  Sam  Brown's 


Trading  Post  had  been  too  small  to  see,  the  real 
one  had  been  too  big  for  three  little  ants,  scram- 
bling across  a  sand  dune  in  the  heart  of  the  river 
of  grass. 

Inside  the  Big  Cypress  Swamp 

We  had  skirted  the  fringe  of  Big  Cypress 
Swamp  a  week  before  penetrating  into  the  Ever- 
glades. The  friend  with  whom  I  made  the  expe- 
dition had  taken  me  in  his  car  from  Route  41, 
the  Tamiami  Trail,  to  Immokalee,  just  to  give 
me  an  idea  of  what  the  Everglades  would  be  like. 

The  road  was  hot  and  dusty  and  quite  new, 
with  innumerable  little  bridges  made  of  concrete, 
dazzling  white  in  the  sun.  On  the  right  hand 
side  was  a  ditch,  and  beyond  that  the  Big  Cypress 
Swamp. 

It  was  just  a  forest  of  dead  trees,  draped  with 
the  torn  shrouds  of  Spanish  moss,  and  seemed 
endless.  As  we  drove  on,  past  mile  after  mile 
of  dead  marshy  forest,  dotted  here  and  there 
with  distant  colonies  of  white  birds  that  created 
the  illusion  of  whitewashed  cottages  hidden  in 
the  woods,  the  Big  Cypress  Swamp  began  by  its 
very  monotony  to  exert  a  A\eird  fascination.  We 
began  to  understand  why  the  legends  of  the 
Indians  describe  the  big  swamp  as  the  home  of 
ghosts  and  goblins,  and  Avhy  in  their  symbolic 
world  the  dead  do  not  go  on  hunting  in  eternal 
pastures,  but,  standing  in  slender  canoes,  silently 
drift  among  the  pillars  of  the  great  and  still 
catl>edral  that  is  Big  Cypress  Swamp.  My  friend 
and  I,  after  driving  silently  along  the  new  road 
alongside  the  great  forest,  both  felt  a  longing  to 
venture  inside. 

When  we  finally  did,  on  top  of  our  guide's 


38  ROBINSON     CRUSOE     IN     FLORIDA 


swamp-buggy  that  snorted  and  splashed  its  way 
pugnaciously  through  the  Indians'  Hereafter,  it 
was  quite  different.  There  was  no  atmosphere 
of  goblins  ;ind  ghosts,  nor  did  the  Gothic  caverns 
of  the  forest  seem  haunted  by  old  men  standing 
in  slender  canoes.  The  reason  was,  perhaps,  that 
we  followed  a  trail  that  had  been  bulldozed  a 
year  before  by  a  crew  of  oil  prospectors;  if  the 
forest  was  haunted  by  anything  at  all  it  was  by 
the  memory  of  that  first  exploration.  On  the 
hillocks  between  which  the  trail  weaved  its  way 
erratically,  there  were  the  remnants  of  those  first 
white  men's  campfires:  rusty  cans  riddled  with 
the  holes  of  pistol  practice,  beer  bottles,  and  the 
broken  Bakelite  casing  of  a  portable  radio  set.  At 
the  sight  of  that  shell  inside  which  only  a  year 
ago  had  croaked  the  midtitongued  voice  of  in- 
visible men  in  the  stillness  of  the  forest,  it  began 
to  dawn  on  me  why  there  was  not  a  goblin  left  in 
the  swamp.  For  what  is  the  wandering  glowworm 
or  a  will-o'-the-wisp  compared  to  a  shrill  little 
voice  shouting  "Get  regidar  the  nattiral  way!" 
in  Spanish,  from  Havana? 

No  ghost  haunted  by  the  memory  of  the  living 
can  silently  glide  nearer  to  God  in  the  frail 
canoe  of  his  dreams,  if  across  the  twilight  path 
shimmering  between  the  trees  there  crashes  a 
yellow  monster  with  a  horizontal  axe,  thrusting 
its  way  toward  man's  eternal  hope:  oil.  And 
the  pistol  shots,  aimed  at  Libby's  Pork  and  Beans 
for  practice,  must  have  chased  not  only  the 
laughing  bird,  the  owl,  and  the  roseate  ibis,  but 
also  the  pernicious  jewel  of  Aloka,  caught  in  the 
giant  spider's  web,  and  Treetah,  the  monkey  hid- 
ing human  children  he  had  stolen  to  teach  his 
brood  the  way  of  men.  And  now  here  we  were 
with  our  little  machine,  spluttering,  slobbering, 
lunging  along  the  trail  made  by  our  big  me- 
chanical brother,  and  looking  hopefully  about  us 
for  the  world  of  myth  and  mystery. 

When,  toward  nightfall,  we  came  splashing  out 
of  the  forest  into  the  boundless  desert  of  water 
that  was  the  Everglades,  now  blooming  with  the 
giant  flower  of  the  sunset,  the  guide  said,  "Well, 
that  was  Big  Cypress  Swamp!  Did  you  fellows 
like  it?" 

We  both  hastened  to  say  that  we  had  liked  it 
very  much;  neither  of  us  confessed  to  our  secret 
nostalgia  for  the  Big  Cypress  Swamp  as  we  had 
seen  it  from  the  outside  that  magic  afternoon, 
long  ago,  last  week. 

The  Eunuchs  of  the  Wilderness 

To  reach  the  heart  of  the  River  of  Grass,  you 
must  pass  through  ilic  ouiskiris  of  ( ivilizaiion. 
Outside  the  hist  setilcmcm  of  Inmiokalce,  there 


is  a  shanty  town  of  the  Negroes  who  work  on  the 
sugar  plantation;  then  the  bleak  barracks  of  the 
itinerant  Mexican  laborers;  then  the  wall-less, 
thatched  hovels  of  the  Seminole  Indians,  brood- 
ing morosely  among  the  rusty  junk  of  broken 
cars.  Finally,  beyond  the  barbed  wire  of  the  out- 
ermost ranch,  there  is  the  great  plain. 

The  last  ripple  of  the  concentric  rings  of  man's 
civilization  is  the  straggling  herd  of  steers  called 
scrub  cattle,  the  lowest-grade  beef,  roaming  on 
the  fringe  of  the  wilderness.  During  the  first  day 
of  your  trek  you  still  spot  them  occasionally,  peer- 
ing at  the  limging  swamp-buggy  from  behind  a 
palmetto  shrub  or  a  mangrove  bush,  with  big 
pointed  horns  over  eyes  that  are  void  of  all  com- 
prehension. At  first  these  steers,  grazing  in  small 
bands  on  the  shore  of  emptiness,  are  anonymous 
but  as  you  venture  deeper  into  the  wilderness,  the 
increasing  loneliness  turns  them  into  individuals. 
Then  there  is  the  last  straggler  and  the  swamp- 
buggy  stops,  impulsively,  to  hail  the  last  living 
being  before  the  void. 

"You'll  see  they're  quite  tame,"  said  the  guide, 
who,  the  day  before,  had  not  even  deigned  to 
look  at  them  as  they  fled,  tails  in  the  air,  through 
the  flooded  pastures. 

But  the  gazing  steer  is  not  tame.  He  is  not 
wild  either.  He  is  just  one  mindless  body  of  the 
great  herd  of  castrated  bulls,  a  eunuch  in  the 
wilderness. 

The  melancholy  of  this  last  steer  before  the 
great  beyond  is  haunting.  There  he  stands,  knee- 
deep  in  the  mire,  staring  with  the  vacant  gaze  of 
neuterdom  at  the  big  armadillo  of  the  swamp- 
buggy  and  its  sun-hatted  white  mice.  The  birds, 
the  wildcats,  even  the  snakes  that  sparsely  dot 
the  waste  of  the  Everglades,  all  have  an  in- 
dependence that  suggests  a  personality,  even  from 
afar.  When  the  limpkin  swoops  from  the  man- 
groves and  vanishes,  squawking,  in  the  waving 
grass,  you  feel  that,  if  you  could  follow  it  and 
alight  by  its  side  in  the  tangled  shrub  of  its 
secret  lair,  you  coidd  talk  with  it— if  only  you 
knew  the  language— and  hear  fascinating  tales 
of  water,  willows,  toad  and  lizard,  of  eggs  gleam- 
ing like  ivory  in  the  twilight  and  the  tragedy  of 
the  lonely  white  feather  floating  on  the  lake. 
But  no  one  on  earth,  not  even  the  most  humili- 
ated and  down-trodden,  could  ever  talk  with  an 
Everglades  steer.  For  here  grows  a  body,  and 
that  is  all;  man  has  extinguished  the  spark  of 
eternity  within  it  and,  with  it,  life  itself. 

As  the  swamp-buggy  sjilashes  on  into  the  wil- 
derness on  its  lonely  journey,  you  remain  con- 
scious of  the  steer  gazing  after  you,  even  when 
you  liave  lost  sight  of  one  another  at  last.   There 


BY     JAN     DE     HARTOG 


39 


is  in  its  gaze  no  sadness  or  reproach;  it  is  the 
vacant  gaze  of  irreparable  idiocy,  an  imbecile  in 
the  death  house.  As  the  buggy  splashes  along, 
the  dour  guide  suddenly  starts  to  sing,  the  im- 
pulsive song  of  relief  of  all  explorers  as  they 
finally  face  the  great  solitude  where  no  one  needs 
wonder  why  he  should  be  his  brother's  keeper. 

The  Great  American  Bird 

The  Pilgrim  Fathers  hunted  the  wild  turkey, 
ate  it,  and  gave  thanks;  it  was  the  beginning  of 
a  great  joy  for  the  new  nation  and  of  a  great 
sorrow  for  the  turkey.  In  the  centuries  that  fol- 
lowed, as  the  American  po[)ulation  began  to 
number  millions,  billions  of  turkeys  were  raised 
for  slaughter  at  Thanksgiving  and  Christmas,  and 
so  there  is  now  no  American  alive  who  can  see  a 
turkey  without  instantly  thinking  of  roasting  it. 
I  can  furnish  no  better  measure  of  the  para- 
disiacal state  of  Nicodcmus  Slough  than  the  fact 
that  the  wild  turkeys  are  not  afraid  of  man. 

We  came  across  a  flock  of  them  somewhere  in 
this  vast,  wild  garden,  and  the  ginde  instantly 
swerved  the  swamp-buggy  off  its  course  to  pursue 
them.  He  had  no  intention  of  shooting  them,  it 
was  just  an  instinctive  reaction.  At  the  other 
birds  we  had  seen  he  had  only  pointed,  crying, 
"Look,  the  limpkin!"  or,  "There  goes  the  wood 
ibis!"  but  at  the  sight  of  the  turkey,  the  force 
of  tradition  made  him  splash  and  bump  after  the 
fleet  animals  that  barely  increased  the  speed  of 
their  graceful  gait  to  keep  their  distance. 

Watching  the  wild  turkeys  tmn  flight  into 
dignified  disapproval  was  to  understand  their  sad 
and  pensive  brother  in  its  cage,  waiting  for  the 
birthday  of  Man's  Saviour.  It  must  have  in  its 
wordless  mind  this  very  image:  a  flock  of  its 
gray  muscular  brothers,  running  sedately  through 
water  and  marsh,  pursued  by  a  panting,  swaying, 
snorting  monster  ridiculous  in  its  powerless 
greed.  The  guide  stood  up  behind  the  wheel  and 
shouted,  "Boo!"  and  "Bang!"  and  "Ratatat!"  but 
these  sounds  meant   as  little   to   the   unhurried 


birds  as  the  frantic  cry  of  "Radiation!"  would 
mean  to  a  Papuan.  So  he  stopped,  got  out  some 
bread  from  under  the  seat,  broke  oft  a  piece  and 
threw  it  at  the  turkeys.  This  was  the  moment  at 
which,  of  one  mind,  they  took  to  the  air. 

That  night,  round  the  campfire,  we  talked 
about  the  sanctuary  of  Nicodemus  Slough,  and 
how  we  seemed  to  have  wandered  into  Paradise. 
Both  the  guide  and  my  friend  agreed  that  the 
American  idea  of  Paradise  was  best  expressed  in 
the  painting  by  the  old  Quaker,  Edward  Hicks, 
"The  Peaceable  Kingdom,"  which  is  the  New 
World's  version  of  the  Garden  of  Eden.  It  is  a 
primiti\e  painting,  showing  guileless  children 
playing  with  a  mixed  company  of  panthers, 
lambs,  mountain  lions,  doves,  and  fox  cubs.  In 
the  background  is  the  great  Quaker,  William 
Penn,  concluding  his  peace  treaty  with  the  In- 
dians. The  only  thing  lacking,  so  my  companions 
agreed,  in  that  glorious  j^ictme  of  the  American 
Paradise,  was  a  long  festive  table,  decked  with 
flowers  and  frint,  bread,  all  kinds  of  cheese,  and 
cold  turkey. 

So,  even  after  the  peaceable  kingdom  has  ma- 
terialized, if  you  see  a  turkey  gazing  morosely  at 
the  horizon  through  the  bars  of  its  pen,  from 
which  it  could  flee  if  only  it  knew  where,  sidle  up 
to  it,  look  to  the  left,  look  to  the  right,  and  whis- 
per, "Everglades." 

The  Lovely  Scourge  of  the  South 

If  you  ask  the  bargees  or  the  tugboat  captains 
to  name  the  scourge  of  the  South,  they  will  an- 
swer without  hesitation:  the  water  hyacinth.  And 
you  cannot  help  reflecting  what  a  blessed  country 
this  is,  that  even  its  scourge  shoidd  be  so  ravish- 
ingly  beautiful. 

The  water  hyacinth,  so  those  who  have  studied 
the  question  tell  us,  was  introduced  into  the 
United  States  in  the  latter  half  of  the  last  century 
by  a  lady  who  loved  gardening  and  who  was 
presented  with  a  basket  of  blooms  for  her  pond 
by  a  nameless  beau  in  Brazil.   She  put  the  small 


40 


ROBINSON     CRUSOE     IN     FLORIDA 


posy  tenderly  in  her  pond  and  let  it  float  out  of 
her  white  hands  in  the  silver  of  the  sky;  it  drifted 
silently  away,  among  the  clouds  and  the  lily  pads, 
and  choked  the  rivers  of  the  South  with  its  silent 
message  of  love.  If  ever  there  was  a  romantic 
flower  it  surely  is  the  water  hyacinth,  and  no 
throttled  life  lines  of  any  overcultured  country 
can  boast  a  sweeter  strangulation. 

The  bloom  that  floated  from  the  lady's  hands 
multiplied  a  zillionfold  and  now  the  bayous  of 
Louisiana  look  like  meadows,  the  ditches  of 
Florida  flower  with  delicate  mauve  blossoms,  and 
even  in  that  hidden  fairyland  of  solitude,  Nico- 
demus  Slough,  the  blooms  of  love  drift  down 
Fish-Eating  Creek.  The  only  thing  that  gives 
away  the  sad  truth  that  they  are  not  flowers  but 
weeds  is  the  fact  that  they  have  no  scent. 

The  traveler,  seated  on  the  bank  of  this 
romantic  stream,  gazing  at  the  silent  procession 
of  posies,  bouquets,  flowerbeds,  and  triimiphant 
islands  of  blooms,  becomes  aware  that  the  water 
hyacinth's  disastrous  invasion  of  the  waterways 
of  the  South  is  a  quest  for  an  elusive  goal. 

To  sit  on  a  river's  bank  in  the  South  and  watch 
the  hyacinths  float  by,  accompanied  by  their  re- 
flection, first  inspires  the  beholder  with  philo- 
sophic thoughts,  then  with  silence,  and  in  the 
end  with  an  inexpressible  feeling  of  hope.  For 
whether  the  hyacinth  ever  reaches  the  bliss  of 
scent  or  whether  the  traveler  will  ever  behold 
the  dawn  of  truth,  seems,  after  this  glimpse  of 
eternity,  immaterial.  What  counts  is  the  hope 
itself;  rare  and  precious  are  the  moments  when 
this  silent  message  comes  floating  down  the 
stream  of  life. 

The  Place  Called  Indian  Prairie 

The  first  time  I  set  eyes  on  Indian  Prairie 
was  from  the  banks  of  Fish-Eating  Creek.  There, 
across  the  still  water  in  which  the  hyacinths 
drifted  among  the  clouds,  I  saw  a  silver  world, 
guarded  by  motionless  ibises  and  a  host  of  snowy 
egrets  that  looked  like  small  white  angels  at 
play.  The  boundless  waste  of  water,  saw  grass, 
sky,  and  clouds  radiated  an  exultant  promise;  the 


promise  of  journey's   end,   the  goal   of   all   for- 
gotten pilgrims. 

I  asked  the  guide  what  it  was  and  he  said,  "Oh, 
that's  Indian  Prairie." 

I  stood  gazing  at  the  promised  land,  trying  to 
put  into  words  what  it  was  that  held  this  great 
promise,  what  the  secret  was  of  this  dazzling 
radiance  of  peace  and  hope.  But  I  turned  away 
without  the  answer;  all  I  had  acquired  was  the 
haunting  knowledge  that,  somewhere  in  the  heart 
of  this  continent  of  mountains  and  rivers,  of 
thundering  cataracts  and  chortling  brooks,  there 
was  a  place  called  Indian  Prairie  where  the  In- 
dian warriors  had  gone  to  their  eternal  bliss  and 
where  there  was  peace. 

The  next  day  we  penetrated,  again  by  swamp- 
buggy,  into  a  forest  of  fallen  palm  trees,  tangled 
vines,  and  dead  cypress  draped  with  moss.  After 
a  struggle  of  hours  ^ the  forest  suddenly  broke 
open  into  a  great  expanse  of  light  and  water.  As 
far  as  the  eye  could  reach  there  was  a  silver  desert 
of  water  and  grass,  and  again  this  land  of  promise 
was  guarded  by  the  motionless  sentinels  of  ibises, 
perched  on  their  watchtowers  of  oak  across  the 
river,  and  again,  in  the  far  distance,  there  was  the 
fluttering  white  flock  of  thousands  upon  thou- 
sands of  dancing  egrets.  The  peace  across  the 
still  water  stimned  us  to  silence;  after  we  had 
stood  watching  for  a  long  time,  overawed  by  its 
eerie  bliss,  my  friend  asked  the  guide,  "Indian 
Prairie  again?"  and  the  guide  nodded. 

"Let's  go  there,"  I  suggested. 

But  the  guide  shook  his  head.  "Too  far  for 
us,"  he  said. 

I  have  since  seen  Indian  Prairie  many  times. 
I  have  seen  it  open  up  beyond  small  towns,  at 
the  turning  of  a  highway,  behind  a  fringe  of 
palms  on  the  coastline,  at  the  far  end  of  the 
canyons  of  Manhattan.  It  is  the  soul  of  America 
that  the  white  man  will  forever  hope  to  capture, 
it  is  the  reason  why  the  keynote  of  the  American 
dream  is  conquest,  and  the  core  of  the  American 
doubt  a  sense  of  futility.  Indian  Prairie  is  every- 
where on  this  continent,  yet  no  white  man  will 
ever  get  there.   It  is  too  far  for  us. 


Harper's  Magazine,  August  1961 


McNAMARA 


JOSEPH    KRAFT 


AND  HIS  ENEMIES 


For  the  first  lime  in  years,  a  Secretary  of 

Defense  is  really  running  the  Pentagon — 

with  a  vigor  and  decisiveness  that  have  dazzled 

some  military  men,  infuriated  others. 

He  has  won  the  first  skirmishes  .  .  .  but 

his  battle  is  far  from  over. 

ON  E  of  the  issues  in  the  1959  Congres- 
sional hearings  on  the  defense  budget 
concerned  a  choice  between  two  nearly  identical 
projects  for  knocking  down  enemy  planes.  De- 
fense Secretary  Neil  McElroy  acknowledged  that 
he  had  not  made  up  his  mind,  and  indicated 
some  complex  technical  questions  were  involved. 
He  told  the  Congress: 

As  far  as  I  am  concerned,  it  would  not  bother 
me  if  you  held  our  feet  to  the  fire  and  forced  us 
[to  make  a  choice]. 

One  of  the  issues  in  the  1961  hearings  on  the 
defense  budget  concerned  a  decision  to  strike 
from  the  Air  Force  estimates  a  project  for  a 
nuclear-propelled  aircraft.  In  the  midst  of  a  long 
and  highly  technical  discussion,  a  Congressman 
gently  implied  that  Defense  Secretary  Robert 
McNamara  had  not  been  able  to  give  the  matter 
"personal  attention."  By  the  time  the  Secretary 
got  the  floor  back,  the  imputation  had  been 
muted,  and  he  could  have  lobbed  the  ball  back 
or  let  it  go  entirely.  Instead  he  gave  it  the  hard, 
overhead  smash.    He  told  the  Congress: 

I  am  not  accustomed  to  making  recommenda- 
tions on  matters  affecting  the  life  of  this  nation 
without  personally  investigating  them  to  the  fullest 
extent. 

The  contrast  in  those  two  attitudes  toward 
decision— the  one  passive,  not  to  say  reluctant; 
the  other  active,  not  to  say  eager— exemplifies  in 


little  a  vast  change  that  has  come  over  the  Penta- 
gon. Mr.  McNamara,  a  management-control  man 
from  way  back,  has  been  moving  with  systematic 
determination  to  impose  a  coherent,  pragmatic 
logic  over  the  whole  defense  establishment. 
Backed  by  a  small  group  of  civilian  aides,  he  has 
forced  the  pace  relentlessly  in  matters  of  person- 
nel, procedure,  weapons  systems,  and  general 
strategic  doctrine.  To  some  he  has  become  the 
hero  of  the  new  Administration.  'Tor  the  first 
time,"  a  Pentagon  civilian  claims,  "we  have  a 
Secretary  who  takes  questions  of  national  defense 
as  a  personal  responsibility." 

Inevitably,  however,  the  Secretary  has  pene- 
trated deep  into  fields  once  reserved  for  the  mili- 
tary. He  has  barked  shins  throughout  the  coun- 
try's polity  and  economy.  A  stream  of  complaints 
has  flowed  from  the  Armed  Services  and  their 
friends  and  clients.  Carl  Vinson,  the  powerful 
chairman  of  the  House  Armed  Services  commit- 
tee, has  semipublicly  "warned"  the  Secretary 
against  abridging  the  independence  of  the  Serv- 
ices and  their  Secretaries.  Virtually  the  whole 
press  has  joined  in  criticizing  McNamara  for 
what  the  Washington  Post  has  called  "The 
Closed  Door  Policy  of  the  Defense  Department." 
Blue  suits  and  brown  alike  have  charged  that,  as 
the  Army,  Navy,  Air  Force  Journal  put  it,  "the 
professional  military  leadership  of  the  nation  is 
being  short-circuited  in  the  current  decision- 
making process  at  the  Pentagon."  "A  Japanese 
general  who  got  a  query  like  this,"  one  officer 
has  said  of  one  of  the  Secretary's  brisker  memos, 
"would  commit  suicide." 

So  far  no  concerted  attack  has  been  mounted 
on  McNamara,  and  it  cannot  even  be  said  that 
a  general  issue  has  been  squarely  joined.  He  has 
not  lost  a  major  decision,  and  in  the  skirmishing 
he  is  ahead  on  points.  But  in  this  kind  of  fight 
the  purpose  of  the  opposition  is  like  tIK  purpose 


42 


McNAMARA     AND     HIS     ENEMIES 


ol  ihe  opposition  to  French  premiers  in  the  days 
before  De  Gaulle.  The  aim  is  not  to  score  a 
knockout.  It  is  to  create  a  sense  of  frustration 
and  weakness  that  ultimately  makes  compromise 
and  concession  inevitable. 

KNOWING     THE     ALTERNATIVES 

IN  February,  March,  and  April  of  1924,  the 
magazine  Management  and  Administration 
carried  a  series  of  articles  written  by  Donaldson 
Brown,  a  du  Pont  and  General  Motors  executive, 
and  entitled  "Pricing  Policy  in  Relation  to  Finan- 
cial Control."  They  told  the  story  of  how  central 
management,  that  is  to  say  du  Pont,  had  estab- 
lished a  tight  rein  over  the  far-flung  General  Mo- 
tors divisions.  They  taught  the  lesson  that  in  the 
management  of  huge  and  complex  organizations, 
the  traditional  reliance  on  experience  and  intui- 
tion was  not  sufficient.  Additionally  there  had  to 
be:  deliberate  analysis  of  all  functions;  formula- 
tion of  alternate  ways  of  doing  the  same  thing; 
and  an  explicit  choice  made  among  the  alterna- 
tives—if possible  on  the  basis  of  numerical  data. 
Management  control,  Brown  wrote,  involves  "a 
manifestation  of  the  principles  on  which  any 
measure  or  course  of  action  is  based,  having  re- 
gard to  both  the  ends  aimed  at  and  the  measures 
used  to  arrive  at  them." 

Though  the  articles  attracted  little  public  at- 
tention, they  stirred  enduring  interest  among 
professional  students  of  administration— notably 
at  the  Harvard  Business  School.  There  in  the 
late  1930s,  the  articles  became  known  to  a  bright 
young  Californian  who  came  to  learn  and  stayed 
to  teach.   He  was  Robert  Strange  McNamara. 

Ever  since  then,  McNamara  has  been  weigh- 
ing, testing,  refining,  and  applying  the  doctrine 
of  management  control.  He  has  been  a  company 
man  par  excellence,  repeatedly  coming  in  from 
the  wings  to  establish  the  authority  of  central 
management  over  widely  dispersed  operations. 
As  an  officer  in  World  War  II,  he  helped  estab- 
lish a  system  of  Statistical  Control  that  made  it 
easier  for  the  Air  Force  to  keep  track  of  pro- 
curement activities  spread  out  in  thousands  of 
plants  across  the  country.  As  a  junior  executive, 
before  becoming  comjjtroller  and  then  in  1960 
president,  he  helped  the  Ford  Motor  Company 
develop  a  cost-accounting  system  that  co-ordi- 
nated production,  purchasing,  and  investment 
with  sales. 

The  emphasis  r)n  management  control  sets 
McNamara  apart  ftf>m  the  fjthcr  succcsslnl  men 
of  business  (the  bankers  Robert  I-f)vetl  and 
James  Forrcstal,  the  (orporatif)n  lawyers  Thomas 


Gates  and  Louis  Johnson,  the  industrialists 
Charles  Wilson  and  Neil  McElroy)  who  have 
preceded  him  as  Defense  Secretary.  It  is  the 
guideline  of  his  career,  and  he  has  made  it  the 
ruling  principle  at  the  Pentagon.    As  he  puts  it: 

I  see  niv  position  here  as  being  that  of  a  leader, 
not  a  judge.  I'm  here  to  originate  and  stimulate 
new  ideas  and  programs,  not  just  to  referee  argu- 
ments and  harmonize  interests.  Using  deliberate 
analysis  to  force  ahernative  programs  to  the  sur- 
face, and  then  making  explicit  choices  among  them 
is  fundamental. 

As  a  walking  advertisement  for  active  manage- 
ment, McNamara  knows  few  peers.  Youthful 
(forty-four)  and  vigorous  (a  skier  and  mountain 
climl^er),  he  works  from  seven  to  seven,  six  days 
a  week,  and  generally  j)uis  in  a  few  hours  on 
Sunday.  Speed  is  a  special  forte:  his  rule  is  to 
make  his  own  decisions  within  seven  days,  and 
he  has  jolted  Pentagon  staffs  with  requests  for 
answers  within  days  on  complex  issues  (the  fu- 
ture of  the  aircraft  carrier,  for  example)  that  they 
have  been  arguing  about  for  years.  A  bug  for 
figures,  he  once  asked  a  group  trying  to  analyze 
the  specially  messy  problem  of  limited  war  to 
put  tabular  boxes  in  their  report  even  if  they 
couldn't  come  up  with  the  numbers  to  fill  them: 
"That  way  we'll  know  what  we're  looking  for  and 
can't  find."  His  search  for  alternatives,  in  par- 
ticular, is  systematic.  "In  the  old  days,"  a  Pen- 
tagon scientific  adviser  recalls,  "we'd  sometimes 
have  a  recommendation  kicked  back  with  a  re- 
quest for  alternatives.  McNamara  won't  even 
look  at  a  thing  unless  the  alternatives  are  there." 

In  matters  of  decision,  the  Secretary  is  mindful 
of  the  value  of  hedging  and  of  what  he  calls 
putting  the  decision  "ahead  of  me."  "He  always 
wants  to  know,"  one  assistant  says,  "what  the 
penalty  is  for  failure."  He  Avas  barely  in  office 
when  he  decided  that  he  would  put  off  for  at  least 
a  year  a  decision  on  unifying  the  Services.  At 
about  the  same  time  he  explicitly  concluded  that 
until  he  got  more  experience,   he  woidd   defer 


Joseph  Kraft  began  to  catch  ideas  for  this 
article  while  working  on  a  report  for  "Harper's" 
on  the  RAND  Corporation,  published  in  July  I960, 
and  while  flying  over  the  11.  S.  A.  in  the  Kennedy 
campaign  plane  last  fall;  he  did  the  close-up  study 
this  summer  at  the  Pentagon.  Mr.  Kraft's  first  book, 
"The  Struggle  for  Algeria,"  will  be  published  in 
October  by  Doublrday.  During  World  War  II,  Mr. 
Kraft  interrupted  his  college  course  at  Columbia 
to  serve  in  the  Army  in  Washington  as  a  Japanese 
translator:  he  has  since  worked  on  the  "Washington 
Post"  and  the  "New  York  Times." 


BY     JOSEPH     KRAFT 


43 


on  matters  of  foreign  policy  to  Dean  Rusk  and 
the  State  Department. 

As  a  nay-sayer,  the  Secretary  can  be  formidable. 
Despite  pressure  from  the  President,  he  rejected 
two  political  suggestions  for  appointment:  Frank- 
lin D.  Roosevelt,  Jr.  as  Secretary  of  the  Navy;  and 
Joseph  Keenan  of  the  AFL-CIO  as  Assistant 
Secretary  of  Defense  for  Manpower.  Despite  great 
Administration  emphasis  on  the  need  to  be  able 
to  fight  limited  wars,  despite  enormous  pressure 
from  the  Army  for  more  men,  despite  a  green 
light  from  the  White  House  and  the  Congress  on 
appropriations,  the  Secretary  is  still  not  con- 
vinced that  the  appropriate  way  to  use  limited- 
war  strength  has  been  foimd,  and  he  has 
recommended  only  slight  increases  in  the  forces— 
and  those  chiefly  in  the  Marines. 

On  the  yea-saying  end  of  the  decision  business, 
he  is  hardly  an  enthusiast.  But  he  walks  fast 
toward  meetings  about  a  fighter  plane  that  can 
be  used  for  all  three  services.  A  glint  comes  into 
his  eye  when  he  speaks  of  an  Army  plan  for 
speeding  up  the  readiness  of  Reserve  imits.  Noth- 
ing, moreover,  seems  to  dull  his  interest.  "I 
never  seem  to  be  put  off  by  technical  problems 
of  law,  or  finance,  or  engineering,"  he  once  con- 
fided to  an  associate.  "He  doesn't  know  much 
about  painting  or  literature,"  one  of  the  few 
Washington  hostesses  who  has  been  able  to  bag 
the  Secretary  asserts.  "But  he  really  cares.  He 
boimces  into  the  room,  and  you  have  the  im- 
pression he  wants  to  talk  to  everyone  about  every- 
thing." 

By  good  luck  or  wise  choice  (McNamara  un- 
abashedly claims  the  latter  and  shows  a  thick 
personnel  card  file  to  back  the  claim),  the  Secre- 
tary has  surrounded  himself  with  persons  who— 
while  coming  from  different  backgrounds  and 
having  different  interests— share  his  immediate 
purpose.  Of  particular  help  have  been  the  vari- 
ous public  and  private  groups  which  have  been 
bending  their  backs  over  defense  problems  out- 
side the  Pentagon.  They  offered  a  reservoir  of 
experienced  men  who  in  the  nature  of  their  jobs 
had  been  searching  for  alternatives  to  the  tradi- 
tional ways  of  the  Defense  Department  and  the 
Services.  From  the  group  that  prepared  the 
Rockefeller  Brothers  Fund  report  on  defense, 
McNamara  chose  his  Deputy  Secretary,  the  lawyer 
Roswell  Gilpatric.  From  the  Livermore  Labora- 
tory he  took  his  Director  of  Research  and  Engi- 
neering, the  physicist  Harold  Brown.  From  the 
RAND  Corporation  he  took  his  Comptroller,  the 
economist  Charles  Hitch.  From  the  Johns  Hop- 
kins Foreign  Policy  Research  Center  he  took  his 
Assistant    Secretary    for    International    Security 


Affairs,  the  banker  and  former  government  offi- 
cial Paul  Nitze.  From  the  Senate  Preparedness 
subcommittee  he  took  his  General  Counsel,  the 
lawyer  Cyrus  Vance. 

Though  some  components,  notably  Nitze's  ISA 
staff— which  follows  some  State  Department  pro- 
cedures—have fitted  awkwardly,  common  purpose 
has  worn  away  individual  bias  to  an  astonishing 
degree.  As  a  former  Assistant  and  Under  Secre- 
tary, Mr.  Gilpatric,  for  example,  had  been  known 
as  an  Air  Force  man.  But  despite  Air  Force 
reservations,  he  has  been  one  of  the  sturdy  pro- 
pcjnents  of  the  tri-Service  fighter  plane.  In  testi- 
mony to  a  Congressional  committee  last  March 
he  could  have  been  McNamara  himself:  "We 
don't  believe  that  important  decisions  .  .  .  can 
be  deferred  pending  attempts  to  work  out  a 
modus  Vivendi  which  will  be  satisfactory  to 
everybody." 

McNamara  and  his  band  were  hardly  in  place 
before  they  began  busting  open  problems  for 
decision.  As  a  first  step,  the  Secretary  named  task 
forces,  headed  by  members  of  his  civilian  staff 
and  including  important  Service  representation, 
to  study  four  problems  that  covered  the  whole 
range  of  Pentagon  responsibilities:  Nuclear  War; 
Limited  War;  Research  and  Development;  In- 
stallations and  Logistics.  The  task  force  reports, 
among  other  things,  identified  major  subprob- 
lems  within  each  area.  To  tackle  these,  the 
Secretary  has  sent  out  over  a  hundred  major  re- 
quests for  information  and  recommendations. 
The  inquiry  about  the  uses  of  the  aircraft  carrier 
is  a  typical  example.  Another  asked  for  com- 
ments on  a  plan  to  merge  the  Army's  Strategic 
Army  Corps  with  the  Air  Force's  Tactical  Air 
Command  in  a  single  limited-war  unit.  Still  a 
third,  of  more  grandiose  proportions,  called  for 
"a  draft  memorandum  revising  the  basic  national- 
security  policies  and  assumptions  including  the 
assumptions  relating  to  'counterforce  strikes'  (nu- 
clear attack  on  an  enemy's  military  forces)  and 
the  initiation  of  the  use  of  tactical  atomic 
weapons." 

THE     PRIME     REQUISITE 

ON  T  H  E  basis  of  the  replies,  McNamara 
has  been  making  decisions  at  a  pace  un- 
known in  the  peacetime  annals  of  the  Pentagon. 
A  whole  range  of  actions  flowed  from  the  finding 
of  the  Nuclear  War  study  that  the  prime  requi- 
site was  protection  of  America's  deterrent  power 
against  a  surprise  Soviet  attack.  In  keeping  with 
that  emphasis,  the  Secretary  recommended  to  the 
Congress:  a  50  per  cent  increase,  to  be  achieved 


44 


McNAMARA     AND     HIS     ENEMIES 


by  1964,  in  the  Polaris  submarine  force— which 
can  be  dispersed  and  concealed  in  the  seas;  a 
100  per  cent  increase,  to  be  achieved  by  1968,  in 
the  production  capacity  for  Minuteman  missiles 
—which  can  be  protected  and,  to  some  extent, 
hidden  underground;  a  50  per  cent  increase  in 
the  number  of  bombers  which  can  be  got  off  the 
ground  on  fifteen  minutes'  notice;  a  $50-million 
increase  in  the  Skybolt  missiles  to  be  fired  from 
attacking  bombers;  a  $60-million  increase  in  the 
Midas  warning  system.  Because  of  the  step-up 
in  Polaris  and  Minuteman  strength,  he  canceled 
out  orders  for  two  squadrons  of  a  larger  and  more 
costly  long-range  missile,  the  Titan  II,  scratching 
that  rather  than  the  more  vidnerable  Atlas,  be- 
cause the  latter  was  much  further  along  in  pro- 
duction and  would  fill  the  gap  until  the  Polaris 
and  Minuteman  are  ready. 

Limited  War  studies  are  still  in  the  works. 
One  version,  several  inches  thick,  was  boiled 
down  by  the  Secretary  himself  to  a  list  of  ques- 
tions only  three-quarters  of  a  page  long.  Even 
so,  the  exercise  has  already  indicated  that  the 
problem  lies  less  in  the  number  of  troops  avail- 
able, than  in  getting  them  to  the  right  place  at 
the  right  time.  To  this  end  the  Secretary  has 
already  recommended  a  75  per  cent  increase  in 
the  airlift  capacity  of  the  Military  Air  Transport 
Service;  an  increase  of  15,000  men  in  the  Marine 
Corps  and  5,000  in  the  Army;  and  a  reshaping  of 
the  Reserve  organization  designed  to  make  avail- 
able two  Reserve  divisions  on  three  weeks'  notice. 

The  Research  and  Development  report  spot- 
lighted several  major  programs  that  were  either 
in  duplication  with  other  projects  or  proceeding 
so  slowly  as  to  be  of  dubious  worth  when  com- 
pleted. The  Secretary  canceled  entirely  the  ex- 
pensive program  for  a  nuclear-powered  aircraft. 
In  the  expectation  of  developing  a  tri-Service 
fighter,  he  also  canceled  out,  at  an  immediate 
saving  of  S58  million,  a  program  for  a  new  Navy 
fighter— the  Eagle-Missileer.  In  what  may  be  his 
most  controversial  decision,  he  hedged  on  the 
B-70  long-range,  supersonic  bomber.  He  main- 
tained the  project  at  the  development  stage,  thus 
keeping  open  the  option  for  eventual  production. 
Rut  he  held  off  on  advance  toward  the  produc- 
(ion  stage  on  the  ground  that  production  costs 
wr)uld  run  into  the  billions  while  even  at  the 
earliest  prochution  date,  missiles  might  make  the 
))lane  obsolescent. 

The  Lf)gisii(s  and  Insiallaiions  report  un- 
covered l?y  installations  (52  in  this  (ountry,  21 
abroad)  that  were  surplus  U)  the  needs  o(  ilic 
'lefensc  establishment.  The  Secretary  has  ordeied 
them  closed  down.   FIc  has  also  set   up,  lor  the 


first  time  in  the  Pentagon,  an  Office  of  Economic 
Adjustment,  to  ease  the  impact  of  the  closings  on 
hard-hit  communities  and,  if  possible,  to  find 
constrtictive  uses  for  the  abandoned  facilities. 

"a   quick    fix" 

IN  addition  to  these  operational  decisions,  the 
Secretary  has  been  working  out  important  pro- 
cedural changes  with  General  Counsel  Vance  and 
Comptroller  Hitch.  Under  Vance,  there  has  been 
set  up  an  Office  of  Organization  and  Manage- 
ment Planning.  It  has  a  general  mission  to  hunt 
out  organizational  changes  apt  to  improve  effi- 
ciency. For  example,  it  is  looking  at  the  idea  of 
placing  each  major  weapon  system  vmder  a  single 
project  boss— the  method  followed  by  the  Navy 
in  developing  the  Polaris.  It  is  also  considering 
the  possibility  of  consolidating  fimctions  that  all 
three  Services  perform  independently— intelli- 
gence, for  example. 

Hitch  has  been  given  the  green  light  for  two 
proposals  outlined  in  his  much  discussed  book. 
The  Economics  of  Defense  in  the  Nuclear  Age. 
He  is  putting  into  effect  within  the  Depart- 
ment the  so-called  Performance  Budget.  Gone 
are  the  days  of  only  considering  Service  estimates 
piecemeal  in  terms  of  personnel,  procvirement, 
constrtiction,  etc.  Now  the  requests  are  also 
grouped  into  major  categories  that  relate  to 
military  purposes,  or  what  Hitch  calls  "end- 
product  missions."  Thus  there  is  one  major 
category  for  the  Nuclear  Deterrent,  followed  by 
a  listing  of  all  the  different  elements,  and  their 
costs,  that  contribute  to  the  deterrent  strength. 
Hitch  argues  that  "officials  can  make  more  per- 
ceptive judgments  about  the  importance  to  the 
nation  of  these  missions  than  they  can  make 
about"  such  items  as  personnel  which  could  be 
used  for  anything. 

He  has  also  established  a  Programming  Office 
that,  among  other  things,  should  end  the  old 
practice  of  fitting  defense  estimates  to  arbitrary 
budget  ceilings.  In  the  pnst,  the  military  would 
make  plans— involving  billions  of  dollars  spent 
over  many  years— without  reference  to  the  money 
that  was  available.  To  hold  them  in  bounds, 
previous  Administrations  established  dollar  ceil- 
ings, and  ordered  the  military  to  cut  their  re- 
quests accordingly.  The  residt  was  stretch-out, 
cutback,  and  the  punishing  annual  clash  between 
military  men  and  budgeteers  that  was  so  promi- 
nent a  feature  of  the  Eisenhower  years. 

Through  the  Programming  Office,  Hitch  plans 
to  associate  budgeteers  with  the  military  men 
early  in  the  planning  phase.    A  rough  j)rice  lag 


BY     JOSEPH     KRAFT 


45 


will  be  put  on  all  projects,  not  only  for  one  year, 
but  for  the  lifetime  of  the  project  and  including 
development,  production,  and  operating  ex- 
penses. In  that  way  the  military  planners  will 
be  obliged  to  consider  the  financial  implications 
of  what  they  do  at  all  times.  "We  want,"  Hitch 
puts  it,  "to  introduce  cost  considerations  at  the 
right  time— when  the  decisions  are  first  made  .  .  . 
and  not  later  in  the  cycle  during  the  hectic  stages 
of  some  annual  budget  review." 

In  looking  back  over  what  has  been  done,  the 
Secretary  emphasizes  that  it  is  only  a  first  in- 
stallment—"a  quick  fix,"  in  Pentagon  argot.  He 
also  acknowledges  that  "the  changes  are  not 
minor."  On  that  there  is  no  argument.  Only 
something  major  could  have  called  forth,  as  the 
McNamara  program  has,  the  defense  establish- 
ment's immense,  multiform,  deep,  and  abiding 
capacity  to  resist. 

FRIENDS     OF     STANDPAT 

THREE  days  before  he  left  the  White 
House,  President  Eisenhower  issued  a  por- 
tentous warning  to  the  nation.  His  Farewell 
Address  spoke  of  the  "conjunction  of  an  immense 
military  establishment  and  a  large  arms  indus- 
try."   It  said: 

The  total  influence— economic,  political,  even 
spiritual— is  felt  in  every  city,  every  State  House, 
every  office  of  the  federal  government.  .  .  .  We  must 
guard  against  the  acquisition  of  unwarranted  in- 
fluence, whether  sought  or  unsought,  by  the  mili- 
tary industrial  complex. 

Numerical  evidence  for  that  argument  is  im- 
pressive. The  Armed  Services,  at  the  heart  of  the 
"complex,"  include  2.5  million  uniformed  per- 
sonnel. More  than  a  million  civilians  work  di- 
rectly for  the  Defense  Department.  Between 
three  and  four  million  people  support  their  fami- 
lies on  earnings  from  defense  contractors.  Half 
the  national  budget  and  about  a  twelfth  of  the 
gross  national  product  go  into  defense  expendi- 
tures. A  hundred  of  the  nation's  biggest  and 
most  powerful  companies,  many  of  them  entirely 
dependent  upon  defense  business,  do  more  than 
$15-billion  worth  of  annual  business  with  the 
Defense  Department.  Dozens  of  major  communi- 
ties depend  on  defense  business  and  installations 
for  taxes,  local  commerce,  real-estate  values,  and 
employment  and  union  activities.  In  Los  Angeles, 
for  example,  more  than  half  the  jobs  come, 
directly  or  indirectly,  from  defense  business. 

It  is  dubious— highly  dubious— whether  "the 
complex"  as  a  whole  has  the  cohesion  or  single- 
ness of  purpose  to  enforce  its  will  on  the  nation 


in  any  major  issue.  A  strong  case  can  be  made 
that  the  pluralism  of  the  system— the  separate- 
ness  of  the  Armed  Services,  the  spread  of  defense 
business  and  installations— is  an  almost  absolute 
surety  against  undue  influence  of  a  positive  kind. 
But  the  whole  "complex"  shares,  and  feels  inti- 
mately, the  experience  of  life  in  an  age  of  rapidly 
changing  technology.  Each  of  the  constituent 
elements— and  that  includes  the  flyers  of  the  B-70 
as  much  as  its  makers;  the  Corps  of  Engineers 
as  much  as  the  PX  manager;  the  battleship  ad- 
mirals as  much  as  the  shipyard  workers— lives  in 
the  shadow  of  obsolescence.  They  are  constantly 
on  guard  against  changes  that,  rightly  or  wrongly, 
they  consider  a  threat.  Potentially,  they  are  all 
Luddites. 

The  professional  military  men,  moreover,  are 
conspicuous  for  dedication  to  the  service  of  the 
nation.  They  are  familiar  with  the  country's 
military  posture,  and  with  the  deadly  menace  of 
potential  enemies.  They  believe  strongly  and 
sincerely  in  what  they  are  doing,  and  in  what 
their  units  and  Services  are  doing.  To  fight  for 
these  is,  to  them,  a  matter  of  simple,  patriotic 
duty.  And  they  possess,  apart  from  the  foot- 
dragging  powers  native  to  all  bureaucracies, 
enormous  resources  in  the  press,  the  Congress, 
and  the  general  area  of  public  debate. 

The  press  is  important  because  it  provides  a 
way  for  the  military  to  vent  their  views  without 
the  risk  of  public  identification  and  counterargu- 
ment entailed  in  Congressional  testimony.  A 
large  segment  of  the  press— the  professional  mili- 
tary journals  and  the  trade  magazines  catering  to 
defense  industry— start  off  with  a  friendly  bias. 
More  general  newspapers  tend  to  line  up  with 
the  military  because  the  leaks  staff  officers  can 
supply  are  usually  more  intriguing  (to  reporters, 
editors,  and  readers  alike)  than  the  official  hand- 
outs of  the  Defense  Department.  A  clampdown 
on  leaks,  moreover,  is  especially  jierilous.  It 
bands  the  reporters  and  the  military  together  in 
embattled  defense  of  the  freedom  of  information 
—a  subject  as  dear  to  the  press  as  theoietical  argu- 
ment is  to  Talmudic  scholars,  and  often  with 
about  the  same  relevance  to  reality. 

The  Congress,  of  course,  is  heavy  with  mem- 
bers who  are  quite  properly  concerned  to  look 
after  the  interests  of  their  coiisliiiuMiis.  Thou- 
sands of  j)eople  in  the  Fort  Worth  area  repre- 
sented by  Congressman  James  W^iiglit  of  Texas 
work  in  the  Convair  jilant  that  j)roduces  the 
B-58.  If  he  wants  to  be  re-elected  it  is  a  good 
thing  for  Mr.  Wright  to  be  known— as  he  is— as 
the  "Congressman  from  Convair."  Tlie  North 
American  plants  which  produce  the  B-70  affect 


46 


McNAMARA     AND     HIS     ENEMIES 


the  whole  Los  Angeles  area.  Representatives 
Edgar  Hiestand  and  Clyde  Doyle  trom  Calilornia 
are  not  exactly  skeptical  about  the  B-70.  The 
electrical  workers'  union  in  Brooklyn  is  con- 
cerned lest  members  be  thrown  out  of  w^ork  by 
the  closing  ot  the  Navy  Yard  there.  So,  unsur- 
prisingly, is  Representative  Emanuel  Cellcr.  The 
Griffis  Air  Base  and  Army  Arsenal  in  Rome,  New 
York,  are  important  sources  ol  jobs  in  a  de- 
pressed area.  Sam  Stratton,  the  Congressman 
Irom  that  district,  is  one  of  the  most  intelligent 
young  men  in  the  Congress.  But  he  is  at  a  little 
less  than  his  best  when  it  comes  to  authorizing 
Titan  missiles  that  might  swell  the  ^vork  force 
at  Griffis.  And  so  it  goes,  up  and  down  the  length 
and  breadth  of  the  country. 

In  addition,  there  are  the  jjrivatc  ties  of  Con- 
gressmen and  Senators  with  one  or  another  of  the 
Services.  Tw^o  score  legislators  hold  reserve  com- 
missions—six of  them  as  generals— while  hundreds 
served  in  wartime.  Senator  Paid  Douglas  of 
Illinois,  a  veteran  of  Peleliu  and  Okinawa  gets 
misty-eyed  when  the  Marines  come  into  question. 
Representative  James  G.  Fulton  of  Pennsylvania 
is  pushing  the  comedy  of  imderstatement  to  ex- 
tremes when  he  says:  "I  have  been  a  Navy  man 
so  I  may  be  a  little  prejudiced.  "  When  he  is  not 
asking  that  Polaris  submarines  be  named  after 
vessels  in  the  Confederate  navy,  Senator  Strom 
Thurmond  of  South  Carolina,  a  Brigadier  in  the 
Army  Reserve,  can  be  foimd  fighting  the  Army's 
legislative  battles— notably  on  behalf  of  the  Nike- 
Zeus  anti-missile  missile. 

Even  more  important  are  the  vested  interests 
of  senior  legislators  holding  strategic  committee 
posts.  Mr.  Carl  Vinson  of  Georgia,  the  chairman 
of  the  House  Armed  Services  committee,  w-as 
elected  to  the  House  in  1914.  He  has  been  chair- 
man of  the  committee  since  its  inception  back 
in  1947— and  of  the  House  Naval  Affairs  com- 
mittee for  fifteen  years  before  that.  He  knows  the 
inside  and  outside  of  military  budgeteering  as 
few  men.  But  he  also  has  a  host  of  friends  in  the 
Services.  His  post  affords  him  immense  patron- 
age. It  is  not  an  accident  that  Georgia  is  so 
heavily  laden  with  bases  that,  as  an  Air  Force 
officer  once  put  it,  "one  more  would  sink  the 
stale.  "*  Neither  is  it  an  accident  that  no  one  has 
ever  accused  Mr.  Vinson  of  being  a  wild-eved 
advocate  of  change.  He  likes  things  ])retty  miuh 
as  they  are. 

What  lends  special  force  to  tlie  staiulpaftcrs  is 
that  they  have  available  for  use  a  ((jllcnion  of 

•Georgia  lias  c  iglii  Air  bases,  five  Armv  lorls.  in 
(iiifiing  llic  liiif^c  i(il:'iilry  (amp  ol  I'oi  i  IW  iiiiiiij^,  and 
six  other  insiallaiif)ns. 


talking  points,  half  truths,  empty  gen^ra^lities, 
and  red  herrings  that  would  fill  any  arsenal  in 
the  country.  The  so-called  Great  Debates  of  the 
past  have  not  tinned  on  square,  or  even  soluble 
issues.  On  the  contrary  they  have  raised  such 
questions  as  Security  vs.  Freedom  of  the  Press; 
Military  Discipline  vs.  the  Right  of  the  Congress 
to  Know;  Civilian  vs.  Military  Authority;  Mili- 
tary vs.  Budgetary  Needs.  These  are  precisely  the 
kind  of  questions  that  effective,  free  societies  have 
traditionally  declined  to  settle— for  the  very  good 
reason  that  they  cannot  be  finally  settled.  The 
predictable  result  of  such  general  debates  as  the 
Admirals'  revolt  of  1949  is  all  that  their  pro- 
moters coidd  wish  for:  a  heating  up  of  tempers, 
ending  in  a  confirmation  of  things  as  they  were. 
The  Great  Debate  on  matters  of  principle,  in 
short,  is  the  ultimate  weapon  of  those  who  ^vould 
stand  pat  with  the  old  system. 

A     WHIFF     OF     THE     GRAPESHOT 

THE  McNamara  program,  of  course,  poses 
a  severe  challenge  to  the  old  system.  By 
its  explicit  choices  on  weapons  systems  and  on 
bases,  it  runs  athw^art  a  wide  variety  of  constit- 
uency, contractors,  and  Service  interests.  In  the 
Congressional  hearings,  the  expected  resistance 
came  from  the  expected  sources.  Senator  Thur- 
mond, with  encouragement  from  Army  spokes- 
men, proposed  a  larger  appropriation  for  the 
Nike-Zeus  system.  Congressman  Stratton,  argu- 
ing that  the  Titan  was  an  "invulnerable  missile," 
moved  for  "an  increase  of  S25  million  to  provide 
for  the  restoration  of  the  two  Titan  II  missile 
squadrons  that  were  dropped  out  by  the  Depart- 
ment." Congressman  VV^right,  in  a  special  ap- 
pearance as  a  witness  before  the  House  Armed 
Services  committee  pressed  for  two  more  wings 
of  the  B-58— "the  best  bomber  we  ha\e."  On  the 
nuclear  plane,  one  of  its  ])rime  Congressional 
advocates  served  up  to  General  Thomas  White, 
Chief  of  Air  Staff,  a  soft  ball,  obviouslv  meant 
to  be  batted  out  of  the  park.  This  was  the 
exchange: 

Q.   In  other  words,  General,  you  don't  think  of 
a  nuclear  powered  plane  as  a  "gimmick"  .  .  .  ? 
A.  No  sir. 

Still  all  matters  of  weapon  choice  posed  scpiarc 
issues,  and  Secretary  McNamara  could  argue  to 
the  fads.  The  great  body  ol  the  Congress  was 
obviously  impressed  by  his  jjresentations.  Sena- 
tor Richard  Russell,  veteran  chairman  of  the 
Senate  Armed  Set  vices  committee,  told  the  Secre- 
tary: 


liV      JOSEPH      KRAFT 


47 


I  have  been  listening  to  statements  from  oflicials 
of  the  Department  of  Defense  now  for  almost  thirty 
years  .  .  .  and  1  have  never  heard  one  that  was 
clearer,  more  definitive,  and  yet  more  comprehen- 
sive than  the  statement  that  you  have  given  to  this 
committee. 

In  committee,  the  Secretary  won  every  trick 
but  one.  The  Congress  was  not  convinced  by  his 
arguments  that  by  1970  it  would  be  safe  to  rely 
entirely  on  missile  strength,  and  it  has  voted 
S500  million  more  than  the  Secretary  sought  for 
B-52  bombers.  Even  that  loss  can  be  erased.  The 
Administration  can,  and  probably  will,  refuse 
to  use  the  money. 

WHiat  the  Secretary  does,  however,  has  not  been 
put  into  question  nearly  so  much  as  the  way  he 
does  it.  In  particular,  though  tho  military  per 
sonnel  cannot  voice  the  feeling  openly,  it  is  cleat 
that  they  resent  the  intrusion  of  the  Secretary 
and  his  staff  deep  into  the  field  of  military  plans. 
One  general,  speaking  with  obvious  sarcasm,  told 
a  House  committee: 

We  read  every  day  about  how  fortunate  we  are 
to  have  the  civilian  competency  Avhich  is  being 
brought  into  the  government,  and  as  a  simple  mili- 
tary man  I  accept  these  profound  decisions  as  being 
made  in  great  wisdom. 

In  similar  vein  another  general  declared  he 
was  speaking  "from  the  relatively  limited  point 
of  view  of  .  .  .  an  aviator  of  mOre  than  thirty-five 
years'  service  in  flying."  The  Army,  Navy,  Air 
Force  Journal,  obviously  sniping  at  the  academic 
background  of  McNamara's  staff,  has  run  a  fable 
demonstrating  ^vhat  would  happen  if  a  general 
took  over  a  university  and  began  meddling  in  the 
curriculiun.  According  to  one  very  well-informed 
Pentagon  correspondent,  Lloyd  Norman  of 
Neivsiueek,  the  brass  has  been  meeting  outside 
the  building  to  keep  clear  of  the  civilian  leader- 
ship. "I  wish,"  one  philosophic  general,  s]3eaking 
privately  of  bygone  civilian  bosses,  candidly  ac- 
knowledges, "we  had  those  dumb  bastards  back 
again." 

Such  feelings  provide  the  stuff  of  Great  De- 
bates, and  preliminary  maneuvers  have  already 
given  Secretary  McNamara  more  than  a  whiff  of 
the  grapeshot.  Two  cases  in  point  are  the  affair 
of  the  Rusk  memo  and  the  affair  of  the  Lemnitzer 
protest. 

The  affair  of  the  Rusk  memo  began  on  Febru- 
ary 15,  when  Secretary  of  State  Rusk  sent  to 
Secretary  McNamara  a  memo  setting  out  s^eneral 
foreign-policy  requirements  for  .American  mili- 
tary power.  Among  other  th'ngs,  he  reiterated 
the  need  to  have  a  strong  nuclear  force  available 
for  deterrent  purposes,  notably  in  Europe.   Some 


circles  of  the  Air  Forte,  however,  sensed  in  the 
Administration  emphasis  on  limited  warfare  a 
trend  that  might  have  the  effect  of  favoring  the 
Army  and  clipping  Air  Force  wings.  In  the  Rusk 
memo  they  saw  a  chance  to  publicize  these  fears, 
and  win  for  their  position  the  backing  of  the 
European  allies.  On  February  27,  a  leaked  but 
badly  distorted  version  of  the  Rusk  memo  ap- 
peared in  the  Washington  Star.  Among  other 
things,  it  implied  that  Secretary  Rusk  favored 
abandonment  of  the  nuclear  deterrent  in  Europe. 
The  European  allies  immediately  questioned  the 
State  Department  which  denied  the  story,  sa)ing 
it  exeinplified  "an  irresponsible  and  reckless  atti- 
tude." Secretary  McNamara  instituted  an  investi- 
gation of  the  leak. 

A  great  mass  of  circumstantial  evidence- 
though  not  clear  proof— pointed  to  an  Air  Force 
officer.  He  was  relieved  of  his  Pentagon  duties 
and  posted  to  the  field.  "The  military,"  as  the 
London  Economist  put  it,  "reacted  with  an  old 
tactic— overzealousness  in  carrying  out  orders." 
Even  on  innocuous  stories,  news  sources  all  over 
the  Pentagon  began  clamming  up.  The  j^ress 
immediately  went  to  work  on  Secretary  McNa- 
mara. Stories  critical  of  his  information  policies 
appeared  on  the  wire  services  and  all  the  major 
dailies.  An  Associated  Press  story  of  May  13,  for 
example,  acknowledged  the  need  to  stop  security 
leaks,  and  then  hauled  out  one  of  the  press's 
oldest  and  most  sophistical  generalizations: 

There  are  many  people  who  insist  that  not 
enough  information  has  been  published.  This 
argument  goes  that  if  the  American  pulilic  had 
been  informed  of  the  nation's  true  military  posture, 
we  would  not  now  be  short  of  airlift  and  sealift, 
missiles  and  military  manpower. 

A  grudging  truce  was  called  only  when  Secre- 
tary McNamara,  at  a  press  conference  on  Mav  26, 
issued  a  statement  of  information  policy.  This 
was  how  the  New  York  Herald  Tribune  reported 
the  event: 

Secretary  of  Defense  Robert  S.  McNamara  shows 
signs  of  coming  out  of  his  cocoon.  .  .  .  .After  nearly 
four  months  of  isolation  and  silence,  the  emerging 
chr\'salis  displayed  itself  at  a  press  conference 
yesterday. 

At  the  same  time  there  occurred,  or,  more 
accurately,  there  was  dragged  out,  the  Lemnitzer 
affair.  It  turned  on  a  decision  by  the  Secretary 
to  vest  i^rimary  responsibility  for  research  and 
development  in  Space  with  the  Air  Force.  The 
directive  was  an  extension  of  a  previous  order 
giving  the  Air  Force  responsibility  for  space 
boosters.  It  was  worked  \\\)  by  a  study  group 
under  General  Counsel  Vance,  which  included 


48 


McNAMARA     AND     HIS     ENEMIES 


three  uniformed  representatives  ot  the  Services, 
and  which  consulted  extensively  over  a  period 
of  seventeen  days  with  Service  and  technical  per- 
sonnel in  the  Pentagon.  A  draft  was  sent  to 
Secretary  McNamara  on  February  23.  Next  day 
he  sent  it  out  for  comment  by  March  2  to  the 
Service  secretaries  and  chiefs,  and  to  General 
Lyman  Lemnitzer,  Chairman  of  the  Joint  Chiefs. 
On  the  basis  of  the  comments,  notably  General 
Lemnitzer's,  the  Secretary  revised  the  directive, 
to  assure  that  the  Army  and  Navy  would  keep 
the  space  projects  presently  in  the  works,  and 
that  they  would  have  the  right  to  a  hearing  on 
any  future  sjiacc  projects  they  felt  fitted  specially 
into  their  bailiwick.  On  March  8,  the  directive 
was  isstied. 

Four  days  later,  on  the  basis  of  what  was  ap- 
parently a  Navy  leak,  the  Chicago  Sun-Times 
carried  an  accovmt  of  General  Lemnitzer's  com- 
ments on  the  draft  directive.  It  indicated  cor- 
rectly that  he  had  voiced  misgivings  about  the 
content  c^f  the  draft  and  about  having  to  com- 
ment so  swiftly,  and  that  he  had  indicated  a 
preference  for  consultation  of  the  Joint  Chiefs 
as  a  body,  rather  than  individually  by  Service. 
But  it  did  not  indicate  that  his  comments  per- 
tained to  the  draft,  and  that  some  had  been  acted 
upon  in  the  final  directive.  On  the  contrary,  the 
story  gave  the  imj^ression  that  the  comments  ap- 
plied to  the  directive,  and  that  General  Lemnit- 
zer was  questioning  the  authority  of  the 
Secretary.   The  lead  of  the  story  said: 

The  chairman  of  the  Joint  Chiefs  of  Staff  has 
protested  officially  that  the  nation's  leading  mili- 
tary men  are  being  edged  out  of  crucial  military 
decisions  in   the   Kennedy  Administration. 

The  Defense  Department  immediately  issued 
a  corrective  on  the  story.  But  the  stir  attracted 
the  attention  of  Overton  Brooks,  chairman  of 
the  House  Committee  on  Science  and  Astronau- 
tics, who  is  worried  and  rightly,  that  the  Air 
Force  may  gobble  up  the  civilian  space  agency. 
Mr.  Brooks  called  hearings. 

That  the  directive  in  itself  harbored  no  threat 
to  the  civilian  space  agency  was  speedily  made 
clear.  For  the  rest,  the  five  days  of  hearings  were 
a  forum  of  discontent.  The  Service  Secretaries 
were  brought  under  pressure  to  show  that  they 
were  doing  their  stuff  for  their  respective  Services. 
This,  for  example  was  one  of  the  exchanges  with 
Navy  Secretary  John  Connally: 

Q.  Am  I  correct  in  assuming  the  Navy  resisted 
this  directive? 

A.  I  would  not  use  tlic  word  "resist,"  but  we 
resisted  it. 


One  uniformed  research  chief  had  a  chance  to 
stake  the  claim  that,  without  Space,  the  scientific 
talent  in  his  Service  would  "atrophy  on  the  vine." 
The  committee  chairman  noted  "the  difficulty  in 
obtaining  the  attendance  at  these  hearings  .  .  . 
of  the  Secretary  of  Defense,"  as  well  as  "a  certain 
foot-dragging  in  making  available  the  military 
witnesses.  .  .  ."  Besides  finding  an  entree  for 
Congressional  wit  ("You  should  change  the  name 
of  the  Air  Force  because  there  is  no  air  in  space"). 
Congressman  James  Fulton  opened  up  a  fetching 
blind  alley  of  infinite  length.  "You  must  define 
to  me  where  space  begins,"  he  told  Deputy  Secre- 
tary Gilpatric.    "Where  does  it  begin?" 

Only  with  the  appearance  of  General  Lemnit- 
zer did  the  cackling  cease— and  then  speedily. 
He  could  not  ask,  he  said,  for  "better  working 
relationships"  with  his  civilian  superiors  in  the 
Department:  "I  am  constantly  consulted.  I  see 
them  on  a  daily  basis  and  many  times  a  day  on 
some  occasions." 

The  issue  of  the  directive,  he  settled  in  two 
words.   This  was  the  exchange: 

Q.  Then  I  understand  from  what  you  say  that 
you   are  supporting   the  directive? 
A.  1    am. 

UNDULY     SURPRISED? 

ON  balance  it  is  clear  that  the  Secretary 
has  come  off  reasonably  well.  He  has 
gained  a  good  grasp  of  his  subject.  He  has  dem- 
onstrated a  rare  strength  in  dealing  with  the 
military.  He  has  emerged  virtually  unscathed 
from  direct  challenges  to  specific  recommenda- 
tions. On  the  larger  political  issues,  he  has  at 
least  held  his  own. 

At  the  same  time,  important  weaknesses  are 
apparent.  McNamara  has  been  slow  to  consult 
Congressional  leaders  before,  rather  than  after 
decisions  are  made  known.  He  has  been  unduly 
surprised  by  the  political  storms  kicked  up  by 
issues  barren  of  real  content.  In  dealing  with 
the  press,  he  has  not  learned  how  to  Hagertyize: 
the  technique  of  pouring  out  a  flood  of  innocu- 
ous information  to  the  dual  end  of  first  keeping 
reporters  busy  and  next  rendering  them  grateful 
to  the  source  of  such  abundant  news.  An  artless 
belief  in  the  powers  of  persuasion  seems  to  affect  . 
at  least  some  of  his  staff.  "If  I  know  more  than 
anybody  else,"  one  aide  has  said,  "then  I'll  be 
able  to  imjjose  my  views." 

All  these  problems  may  seem  minor.  But  while 
they  remain  unmastered,  the  Secretary  will  be 
vulnerable.  For  the  story  of  McNamara  and  his 
enemies  is  only  beginning. 

Hurjycr's  Magazine,  August  1961 


How  to  Play  the 
Unemployment-insurance  Game 


SETH    LEVINE 

Countless  ivorkers  are  now  using  legal 

loopholes  to  cheat  the  taxpayer — by  phony 

retirements,  "off-the-record"  wages, 

and  vacations  at  the  government's  expense. 

IT  I  S  a  few  minutes  bcloi e  eight  on  a  bleak 
winter  morning  in  the  New  York  shoe  factory 
of  which  I  am  part-OAvner  and  general  manager. 
The  place  is  abnormally  cjiiiet,  except  for  the 
occasional  clank  of  massive  steel  elevator  doors 
opening  and  shutting.  Men  shuffle  to  the  dress- 
ing-rooms to  change  their  clothes,  exchange  per- 
functory greetings  w'ith  fellow  ivorkers,  and  move 
on  to  their  machines.  At  eight  o'clock  when  the 
power  switches  arc  thrown,  the  production  line 
will  start   up  with   a  roar. 

Suddenly  a  phone  rings  in  the  shoe-lasting 
room.  The  foreman  takes  the  call  from  Joe 
Minati's  wife.  "He's  got  a  hundred  and  one 
fever,"  she  says,  "and  won't  be  in  today." 

Joe  is  a  roughing  machine  operator  who  works 
midway  on  the  production  line.  His  job  is  to 
buff  the  shoes'  bottom  surfaces,  to  which  soles 
are  then  cemented.  He  alone  handles  this  job 
on  the  eight  hundred  pairs  the  factory  produces 


daily.  Feeding  shoes  to  Joe  on  the  production  line 
are  twenty-five  lasters  and  a  dozen  other  workers. 
They  can  keep  going  without  him,  but  by  quit- 
ting time  the  racks  will  pile  up  from  Joe's  ma- 
chine to  the  lasters'  benches.  If  he  is  out  for 
more  than  a  day,  the  lasters  will  have  to  be  laid 
off.  On  the  other  side  of  Joe's  station,  the  oper- 
ators are  already  hit  by  the  log  jam.  Unfinished 
work  may  keep  them  busy  for  an  hour  or  two. 
But  with  nothing  funneling  throvigh  Joe's  ma- 
chine, they  will  be  through  at  ten  o'clock. 

A  fellow  emplo)ee  cannot  be  shifted  over  to 
Joe's  skilled  job,  for  an  inexperienced  man  or 
one  who  is  out  of  practice  can  ruin  too  many 
shoes.  However,  the  plant  superintendent  must 
somehow  keep  our  highly  seasonal  product  mov- 
ing to  the  retail  stores  on  time.  So  he  implores 
tlic  woikers  down  the  line  to  co-operate  antl 
hang  around  until  the  luiion  office  opens  and  a 
rej)laccmeni    can   be   found. 

Shortly  alici  ten  o'clock  a  substitute  rougher 
—Henry  Smith— apj^ears  bearing  a  union  pass. 
But  he  is  not  ready  to  start  work  until  two 
hurdles  are  crossed— first,  the  matter  of  pay.  As 
a  piece  worker,  Joe  was  getting  2.5  cents  a  pair 
which  amounts  to  about  $2.50  an  hour.  Henry 
wants  to  be  paid  on  a  time  basis— a  reasonable 
recpiest,  since  a  new  man  is  bound  to  be  slow 
until  he  "works  into"  the  particular  machine, 
product,  and  factory  conditions.    But  the  figure 


50 


THE     U  N  E  xM  P  L  O  Y  M  E  N  T  - 1  N  S  U  R  A  N  C  E     GAME 


he  names— $3  an  hour— seems  a  shght  case  of 
extortion.  The  going  rate  in  the  industry  is 
$2.50.  Since  the  superintendent  is  in  a  box  he 
agrees  to  pay  $3  and  lK)pes  that  Henry  will  not 
be  on  the  job  long. 

The  second  hurdle  is  more  vexatious.  Henry 
is  collecting  unemployment  insurance  and  wants 
the  factory  to  pay  him  "off  the  record,"  that  is, 
in  cash.  If  the  superintendent  insists  on  putting 
him  on  the  payroll,  he  won't  work.  To  Henry 
it  is  a  simple  matter  of  arithmetic.  As  a  skilled 
worker,  his  normal  weekly  wage  is  a  hundred  dol- 
lars or  more.  He  is  now  collecting  $50  a  week  in 
unemployment  insuiance.  For  each  d^y  that  he 
works  he  loses  a  quarter  of  his  weekly  benefits— 
$12.50.  A  six-hour  stint  at  our  roughing  machine 
will  give  him  a  wage  of  $18,  but  his  net  will  be 
only  about  $14  after  deductions  for  federal  and 
state  income  taxes.  Social  Security  and  disability 
taxes,  and  the  cost  of  carfare,  lunch,  and  coffee 
breaks.  Subtracting  the  $12.50  lost  from  his  un- 
employment benefit,  he  figures  he  will  make  only 
$1.50  by  working  for  a  day. 

What  is  the  plant  superintendent  to  do?  If  he 
threatens  to  rejjort  the  matter  to  the  unemploy- 
ment-insurance office,  Henry  will  know  this  is  an 
empty  bluff.  Few  employers  will  take  the  trouble 
to  lodge  a  complaint  which  may  well  invohe  a 
hearing  and  a  wasted  day  away  from  the  factQjy. 
Ninety  times  out  of  a  hundred,  the  "help-out's" 
terms  are  accepted. 

To  collect  unemployment-insurance  benefits 
while  working  is  illegal,  a  plain  case  of  fraud; 
but  very  fe^v  w'orkers  see  it  this  ^vay.  For  ex- 
ample, many  who  are  hired  as  permanent  factory 
employees  expect  to  work  the  first  week  or  t^\'o 
"off  the  record.  "  Thus  they  continue  to  collect 
benefits  until  they  decide  if  they  like  the  job 
and  qualify  for  it.  Similarly,  many  workers  who 
retire  collect  both  Social  Security  payments  and 
company  or  union-management  pensions,  as  well 
as  unemployment-insurance  benefits  for  the  full 
period  allowed  under  law. 

\Vhen  production  is  low  in  seasonal  industries. 


Seth  Levine  is  treasurer  and  production  head 
of  a  shoe  manufacturing  firm  in  New  York  and 
chairman  of  the  Union-Management  Welfare  Plan 
in  his  industry.  He  was  educated  as  an  engineer 
and  economist  at  MIT  and  as  a  lawyer  at  George 
Washington  University  Law  School,  worked  in  the 
U.  S.  Bureau  of  Labor  Statistics,  and  became  Re- 
search Director  of  the  CIO  Maritime  Committee. 
He  has  also  been  a  registered  CIO  lobbyist,  adviser 
to  the  U.  5.  Worker  Delegate  to  the  ILO,  and  an 
economic  consultant  to  industry  and  unions. 


workers  who  are  employed  for  only  a  few  hours 
a  day  commonly  expect  either  to  be  paid  oft  the 
record  or  at  some  future  time  when  full  produc- 
tion resumes.  Thus  they  can  continue  to  collect 
their  unemployment  benefits  during  the  slack 
season. 

A  really  shocking  loophole  was  provided  in 
1958  by  a  New  York  state  law  which  was  a 
statutory  restatement  of  earlier  administrative 
practice.  This  permits  workers  to  collect  un- 
employment benefits  while  on  paid  vacation  if— 
for  the  week  preceding  or  following  it— they  are 
"less  than  substantially  fully  employed."  ("Fully 
employed"  is  defined  as  four  days  or  more  of 
work  in  a  gi\en  week.)  Thus  a  worker  who  is 
laid  off  for  two  days,  either  before  or  after  his 
vacation,  is  eligible  for  tax-free  unemployment 
benefits  for  the  two-week  vacation  period, 
amounting  possibly  to  SI 00. 

News  of  this  windfall  ran  through  our  factory 
like  wildfire  early  in  June  last  year.  We  were 
scheduled  to  close  for  vacation  during  the  first 
two  weeks  in  July.  Except  for  a  handful  of  new- 
comers, nearly  all  oiu"  workers  were  entitled  to 
two  weeks'  paid  vacation.  Yet  there  w'as  scarcely 
one  who  did  not  spend  the  month  of  June  de- 
vising ways  to  be  laid  off  for  a  few  days  before 
or  after  vacation.  As  they  figured  it  out,  there 
seemed  to  be  no  point  in  working  the  week  be- 
fore or  after  vacation  for  a  mere  SI 00,  when,  if 
they  w'ere  laid  off,  they  could  get  three  weeks 
of  iniemployment  benefits  amounting  to  SI 35. 
(At  that  time  the  maximum  benefit  in  New  York 
was  S45  per  week.  It  has  since  been  raised  to 
$50.)  Figuring  in  the  taxes  and  costs  of  going  to 
work,  they  made  a  profit  of  S50  with  a  third 
week  of  vacation  thro^vn  in. 


READY,  WILLING, 
AND  able" ? 

THIS  kind  of  morality  is  no  different  than 
what  is  euphemistically  called  "tax  avoid- 
ance "  in  the  upper  income  brackets.  It  is  a  prod- 
uct of  the  ethical  climate  in  which  the  business- 
man seeks  to  profit  from  a  fire  loss  and  the  car 
owner  tries  to  make  money  out  of  a  collision. 
The  worker  too  comes  to  think  that  he  is  "en- 
titled" to  "his  check." 

Although  I  am  writing  now  as  an  employer, 
I  believe  I  can  claim  to  liave  more  than  a  one- 
sided view  of  the  problem.  I  sj>ent  ten  years  of 
my  life  as  a  labor  economist  and  editor  and 
was,  in  fact,  an  active  labor  lobbyist  for  the  un- 
emj)loyment-insurance  laws  thai  are  now  on  our 
statute  books.    I  am  keenly  antl  personally  aware 


BY     SETH     LEVINE 


51 


of  the  value  of  unemployment  insurance  both  in 
alleviating  the  hardships  of  the  man  out  of  work 
and  sparing  him  the  indignity  of  "relief." 

I  also  believe  that  business— particularly  the 
small  concern  like  mine— has  been  one  of  the 
chief  beneficiaries  of  unemployment  insurance. 
Without  this  economic  stabilizer,  our  company, 
for  example,  would  no  longer  have  flourishing 
accounts  in  cities  where  many  workers  are  un- 
employed. It  also  insures  a  steady  labor  supply 
for  seasonal  industries.  My  quarrel  is  not  with 
the  system  but  with  the  distortion  of  its  purpose. 

The  basic  trouble  is  that  workers  and  their 
unions,  government  officials,  and  many  business- 
men have  forgotten  that  this  is  an  "Insurance" 
system.  "It  is  not  'relief',"  says  the  Claimant's 
Booklet  of  Information  issued  in  New  York. 
"You  do  not  have  to  prove  you  need  it.  It  is 
yours  as  a  matter  of  right  provided  you  meet 
the  conditions  fixed  by  the  law." 

The  key  condition  is  this:  "It  is  for  people 
who  are  unemployed,  who  regidarly  work  for  a 
living,  who  are  ready,  willing,  and  able  to  take 
new  jobs  and  who  are  actively  looking  for  jobs." 
All  states  have  similar  provisions.  In  my  ex- 
perience, however,  most  workers  collecting  bene- 
fits are  "ready,  willing,  and  able"  only  if  the 
jobs  they  find  are  permanent,  steady,  and  at 
optimum  rates  of  pay.  I  ha\'e  \et  to  meet  a  man 
who  would  rather  work  part-time  for  .S50  a  week 
at  his  regular  hourly  pay  than  collect  $50  in 
benefits. 

I  have  been  amazed  by  the  skill  of  unschooled 
and  non-English-speaking  workers  in  calculating 
gross  potential  earnings  minus  taxes,  traveling, 
and  other  working  costs,  as  compared  with  avail- 
able unemployment  benefits.  Their  prowess 
would  do  credit  to  a  junior  accountant. 

"You  are  expected  to  look  for  a  job  on  your 
own  and  keep  a  record  of  all  your  job-finding 
efforts,  including  names  and  addresses  of  em- 
ployers to  whom  you  have  applied,  dates  of  ap- 
plication, and  results;  and  a  record  of  other 
efforts  such  as  response  to  ad\ertisements,  visits 
to  union  halls,  etc.,  and  results,"  says  the  Claim- 
ant's Booklet.  This  all-important  "search  for 
work"  requirement  is,  in  practice,  a  dead  letter. 
Dozens  of  claimants  have  told  me  that  the  un- 
employment office  makes  only  the  most  peifunc- 
tory  inquiries  about  their  job-finding  efforts.  Us- 
ually, a  mere  visit  to  the  union  hall  suffices.  It 
is  a  curious  fact  that  our  company,  which  is  well 
known  for  steady  employment  and  growth, 
rarely  receives  a  call  from  the  many  unemployed 
at  the  union  hall.  The  only  job  seekers  who  ap- 
pear at  our  door  are  newcomers— usually  immi- 


grants from  Italy  or  the  West  Indies  or  refugees 
from  Central  and  Eastern  Europe. 

In  New  Jersey,  the  law  now  provides  that  an 
unemployed  worker  need  not  actively  seek  work 
in  order  to  collect  benefits  if  he  is  temporarily 
laid  off  for  a  period  of  four  weeks  or  less.  An- 
other proviso  of  the  New  Jersey  law  permits  the 
State  Director  to  modify  the  active  "search  for 
work"  requirement  if  in  his  judgment  economic 
conditions  warrant  it.  In  effect,  this  encourages 
an  unemployed  worker  to  subsist  on  his  benefit 
checks  rather  than  seek  temporary  employment, 
and  to  bide  his  time  when  recession  strikes 
rather  than  press  his  search  for  work. 

The  dismal  truth  seems  to  be  that  no  one 
today  believes  it  is  better  to  earn  a  dollar  than 
to  collect  one.  Work  is  only  preferable  if  it  pays 
twice  as  well. 


In  a  recent  case,  for  instance,  a  referee  ruled 
that  our  trimming  cutters  could  refuse  work 
which  they  had  often  performed  in  the  past  at 
their  regular  rate  of  $3.31  an  hour  and  still 
collect  unemployment  insurance  because  "the 
taking  of  inventory  was  not  a  function  within 
the  scope  of  the  duties  of  the  trimming  cutters. 
They  were  not  hired  with  the  understanding 
that  they  would  be  required  to  execute  such 
work.  The  collective-bargaining  agreement  did 
not  impose  upon  them  the  duty  to  perform  this 
task." 

Then,  there  was  the  matter  of  a  telejjhonc- 
operator-receptionist  with  whom  our  company 
decided  to  part.  We  were  notified  that  she  was 
collecting  unemployment  insinance  but  we  as- 
sumed it  would  last  only  a  week  or  two.  How- 
ever, the  weeks  dragged  on  and  to  our  surprise 
she  still  had  no  job.  This  was  strange,  as  she  was 
adept    at    the    board,    pretty,    sociable— an    alto- 


52 


THE     UNEMPLOYIVIENT-INSURANCE     GAME 


gether  employable  receptionist.  Later  her  friends 
told  me  that  she  "had  fixed  up  her  apartment" 
while  on  benefits  by  listing  herself  as  a  recep- 
tionist-shoe-model. She  had,  it  is  true,  on  rare 
occasions  displayed  a  new  shoe  in  our  showroom, 
though  this  was  hardly  her  job.  She  put  it  this 
way  herself:  "I've  been  working  for  several  years. 
Why  shouldn't  I  collect?" 

This  is  a  familiar  kind  of  reasoning.  One 
hears  it  among  businessmen,  workers,  profes- 
sional people,  or  housewives.  But  the  fact  is  that 
unemployment  insurance  is  intended  as  com- 
pensation for  a  real  loss  according  to  the  terms 
of  a  prior  bargain.  It  is  not  a  bonus  for  years 
of  steady  work.  Nor— as  some  workers  seem  to 
think— was  unemployment  insur.-ince  conceived 
as  an  income  supplement.  This  notion  unfor- 
tunately has  become  widespread. 

For  example,  we  normally  employ  three 
stitchers  at  a  wage  of  about  3130  each  or  a  total 
of  $390.  When  business  is  slack,  we  have  only 
an  aggregate  of  $260  worth  of  stitching  work  per 
week.  There  is  a  share-the-work  clause  in  our 
union-management  contract.  But  our  stitchers 
are  not  willing  to  continue  work  for  .$86.67  each. 
Instead,  they  expect  to  rotate^  with  one  of  the 
three  out  on  unemployment  insurance  each  week. 
By  this  arrangement,  a  man  works  two  weeks  at 
$130  per  week,  and  then  collects  $50  unemploy- 
ment insurance  which  is  tax-free.  His  take  for 
three  weeks  is  the  ec^uivalent  of  about  $320  in 
wages  as  compared  to  only  $260  under  a  share- 
the-work  plan. 

What  harm  has  been  done?  Eventually,  of 
course,  someone  must  pay  the  bill.  When  un- 
warranted unemployment-insurance  benefits  are 
collected,  the  extra  tax  burden  falls  solely  on  the 
employer. 

Except  for  Alaska,  every  state  in  the  Union  ties 
the  individual  employer's  tax  rate  to  the  recent 
level  of  unemployment  among  his  workers.  In 
New  York,  which  is  typical,  the  rate  varies  in 
relation  to  such  factors  as  benefits  paid  to  former 
workers,  the  employer's  total  payroll,  and  the 
adequacy  of  reserves  in  the  state  fund.  An  in- 
dividual company's  tax  rate  may  range  from 
nothing  to  3.2  per  cent  of  the  payroll. 

To  be  specific,  last  year  our  business  paid 
$20,660  in  unemployment-insurance  taxes.  We 
have  two  hundred  employees  and  thus  our  rate 
was  just  over  $100  per  man.  To  meet  the  cur- 
rent unemployment  crisis,  the  Congress  promptly 
approved  President  Kennedy's  jjroposal  to  ex- 
tend unemployment  benefits  (or  as  long  as  an 
additional  thirteen  weeks.  These  benefits  will 
be  financed  by  an  additional  tax  of  O.i  per  cent. 


As  a  result,  my  company's  unemployment-in- 
surance tax  bill  will  rise  to  $23,000  this  year, 
which  for  us  is  a  substantial  sum,  amounting  to 
an  added  cost  of  over  6.5  cents  per  man-hour. 
Half  of  my  own  working  year  is  spent  in  trying 
to  save  a  quarter  of  a  cent  here  and  there  in 
labor  costs. 

Across  the  country  during  the  past  months  un- 
employment covered  by  state  insurance  has 
varied  between  3.2  million  and  3.4  million.  This 
is  one  million  above  the  1960  figure.  Even  more 
disturbing  is  the  fact  that  long-term  unemploy- 
ment is  up  65  per  cent.  The  action  taken  by 
Congress  was  designed  to  help  workers  in  de- 
pressed areas,  and  those  in  industries  severely 
curtailed  by  automation  and  technological 
change.  There  can  be  no  doubt  that  work  is 
being  desperately  sought  by  millions  of  bread- 
winners—auto workers  in  Detroit,  steelworkers 
in  Pittsburgh,  ore  miners  in  Minnesota,  coal 
miners  in  West  Virginia,  textile  workers  in  New 
England  and  the  South. 

It  is  to  safeguard  the  rights  of  these  victims 
of  recession  and  automation,  to  protect  the  sol- 
vency of  state  funds,  and  to  give  business  a 
chance  to  survive  the  ever-increasing  costs  of 
production  that  the  widespread  abuses  of  the  un- 
employment-insurance systems  must  be  stopped. 

JOBS  INSTEAD  OF  BENEFITS 

THIS  problem  is  difficult  to  attack,  for  the 
lax  practices  I  have  described  are  common- 
place across  the  country.  The  following  ideas 
might  well   be   explored: 

1.  Joint  Tax  Liability.  The  unemployment- 
insurance  tax  is  now  paid  solely  by  the  employer, 
unlike  Social  Security  and  in  some  states  dis- 
ability insurance,  to  which  both  employers  and 
workers  contribute.  Should  workers  participate 
in  the  financing,  not  of  past,  but  at  least  of  fu- 
ture improvements  in  unemployment-insurance 
benefits?  Would  this  make  the  worker  more 
aware  of  the  cost  of  financing  benefits  and  of 
the  fact  that  it  is  an  insurance  system? 

2.  Revitalized  State  Employment  Services.  In 
the  last  analysis,  jobs  and  not  benefits  are  what 
most  workers  want,  and  what  the  economy  needs. 
Yet  far  too  little  money  and  effort  are  spent  in 
job  finding.  State  Employment  Services  should 
have  more  placement  officers  canvassing  local  fac- 
tories and  offices.  They  should  survey  the  types 
of  workers  needetl  by  different  establishments, 
build  a  reference  file  of  possible  job  openings 
for  the  unemployed,  and  educate  employers. 
Most  businessmen  regard  the  State  Employment 


BY     SETH     LEVINE 


53 


Service  merely  as  a  source  of  unskilled  labor. 
I  have  never  been  visited  by  a  rejjresentative 
of  the  State  Employment  Service  seeking  to  place 
unemployed  workers.  However,  I  have  been 
visited  by  a  representative  from  the  New  York 
City  Welfare  Department,  asking  us  to  hire 
workers  from  the  relief  rolls.  Why  not  an  active, 
proselytizing  State  Employment  Service? 

3.  Assistance  for  Small  Business.  A  big  cor- 
poration can  afford  a  full-time  expert  to  mini- 
mize its  imemployment-insurance  tax  burden 
and  to  police  the  erroneous  or  dishonest  collec- 
tion of  benefits.  But  a  small  employer  is  a  babe 
in  the  woods.  I,  for  instance,  have  worked  for 
the  U.S.  Department  of  Labor  and  the  national 
CIO.  Yet  I  have  committed  costly  blunders  as, 
for  example,  a  needless  charge  amouiuing  to 
hundreds  of  dollars  because  we  gave  oral  rather 
than  written  instructions  for  a  two-day  shutdown 
to  take  inventory.  The  state  is  willing  to  answer 
inquiries  but  does  not  proffer  help. 

In  contrast,  our  workmen's-compensation-in- 
surance  carrier  regularly  sends  a  safety  engineer 
to  visit  our  plant.  He  reviews  the  nature  and 
cause  of  accidents  and  gives  valuable  advice  on 
prevention.  The  State  Employment  Ser\icc 
should  likewise  help  small  companies  to  hold 
their  unemjiloyment-insinance  costs  in  check. 

4.  Retraining  and  Relocation  for  the  Chron- 
ically Unemployed.  One  hears  nuich  about  re- 
lief for  the  chronically  unemployed,  but  little 
talk  of  cures.  The  fact  is  that  when  a  worker  is 
unemployed  for  as  long  as  twenty-six  weeks,  he 
will  probably  never  again  find  a  job  in  his  cus- 
tomary trade  or  industry,  or  in  the  same  occupa- 
tion in  his  home  locality. 

What  is  being  done  to  retrain  (n  relocate 
such  workers?  Virtually  nothing.  Indeed,  the 
policy  of  the  typical  State  Employment  Service 


encourages  the  worker  to  refuse  all  employment 
that  is  not  fully  equivalent  to  his  last  job.  This 
is  a  "good  cause"  for  refusing  a  job;  as  is  "an 
unreasonable  distance  from  home;  or  if  travel 
to  and  from  the  place  of  employment  costs  sub- 
stantially more  than  travel  to  your  last  job, 
unless  the  expense  is  j^rovided  for." 

Such  restrictions  against  forced  employment 
were  born  of  a  legitimate  desire  to  prevent  the 
unemployment-insurance  system  from  destroying 
labor  standards  and  from  undermining  the  vi- 
tality of  the  economy.  But  has  their  validity 
been  checked  against  present-day  circumstances? 
Are  ^\e  paying  enough  attention  to  the  re-em- 
ploNuient  of  the  luicmployed,  or  is  our  attention 
exclusi\el)  foctiscd  on  compensation  for  the 
losses  restdting  from  unemployment? 

An  immediate  example  which  might  be  widely 
studied  is  the  path  bla/ed  by  the  Commonwealth 
of  Massachusetts.  In  1958,  its  unemployment- 
insurance  law  was  amended  to  provide  eighteen 
weeks  of  benefits  to  unemployed  workers  attend- 
ing \'ocational  schools  "as  a  means  of  realizing 
employment."  The  cost  is  charged  against  the 
general  fund.  This  plan  might  well  serve  as  a 
model  for  all  state  legislatures  and  I  woidd  like 
to  see  it  widely  copied. 

The  Massachusetts  j^lan  was  given  national 
recognition  in  President  Kennedy's  June  13th 
message  to  Congress  proposing  extensions  in  im- 
emjiloyment-insurance  coverage  and  benefits. 
Among  other  things  the  President  recommended 
that  benefits  be  made  available  to  workers  re- 
training for  new  occupations.  This  is  a  sensible 
and  practical  idea  and  I  hope  this  phase  of  the 
President's  recommendation  will  be  adopted 
promj)tly  by  the  Congress. 

Other  parts  of  the  program  would  make  per- 
manent the  current  temporary  extension  of  un- 
employment benefits  to  as  much  as  thirty-nine 
weeks,  would  induce  stales  to  raise  the  level  of 
unemplo)mcnt  benefits,  and  would  bring  thice 
million  new  workers  under  coverage. 

Financing  the  President's  program  would  re- 
Cjuire  a  substantial  increase  in  j>ayroll  taxes.  For 
examjjle,  I  estimate  that,  uniler  his  draft  bill, 
my  company's  unemj)lo)inent-insurance  tax 
woidd  rise  over  the  next  decade  from  its  current 
level  of  $20,660  per  atmum  to  over  |35,000.  This 
is  no  small  burden  for  the  average  employer. 

To  prevent  our  unemj^loyment-insurance  sys- 
tem from  becoming  an  intolerable  economic 
buiden,  and  to  maintain  its  social  usefulness, 
surely  it  is  imperati\'e  that  we  attack  the  cor- 
rosive and  wasteful  jiractices  which  now  under- 
mine its  high  purpose. 

Harper's  Magazine,  August  1961 


The  Man  Who 
Doubted 


A    Story   by   JACK    COPE 

Drawings  by  Frederick  E.  Banbery 


HE  C  A  M  E  up  out  of  the  mist  at  dusk  to- 
ward the  veranda  steps.  The  farmer  was 
scraping  the  mud  off  his  boots  on  a  sharp  iron 
scraper  and  he  turned  slowly  hearing  the  soft 
footsteps  on  the  wet  ground.  As  their  eyes  met, 
tlic  Zuhi  raised  his  arm  in  a  grand  and  gaunt 
sahitc.    "Inkosana!" 

His  greatcoat  was  an  ancient  military  khaki 
darkened  with  grease  and  ending  in  tatters 
around  his  bare  calves,  and  in  his  left  hand  he 
trailed  a  knobkerrie  and  a  stick,  as  well  as  a  small 
branch  of  wild  olive  with  faded  didl-green  leaves. 
At  his  side,  carrying  a  small  blanket  bundle  was 
a  barefooted  boy  who  looked  enough  like  him 
to  be  unmistakably  his  son.  He  did  not  speak 
again  but  waited  in  a  courteous  silence  until  the 
white  man  should  either  recognize  him  or  ask 
who  he  was. 

He  was  so  striking  in  all  the  singleness  of  his 
dignity,  stripped  down  by  illness  and  poverty 
and  anxiety  to  the  last  degree,  that  the  farmer 
felt  a  keen  pang  of  sympathy,  searching  the 
ravaged  face  for  recognition.  They  were  of  the 
same  age  and  height,  both  tall  graceful  men,  but 
the  black  one  looked  doubly  aged  beside  the 
ruddy  weathered  features  of  the  other. 

Glancing  between  father  and  son  the  farmer 
found  his  clue  suddenly,  and  out  of  the  shadow 
of  thirty  years  a  face  came  back  to  him  of  a  hand- 
some youth.    "Ha,  it  is  you.  Ma  tan,  I  see!" 

The  Zulu  raised  his  head  and  a  quick  and 
grateful  smile  bloomed  on  him.  His  white  teeth 
shone  and  the  heavy  lines  were  loosened  for  a 
moment.  "Inkosana,  you  arc  one  who  seldom 
makes  a  mistake." 


"1  wouldn't  say  that." 

"You  have  grown  more  like  your  father,  and 
his  voice  speaks  again  in  you.  But  I  see  that  you 
carry  a  scar." 

The  white  man  ran  his  fingers  over  a  deep  scar 
Irom  the  corner  of  his  eye  and  disappearing  in 
his  hair.  "The  iron  of  a  cannon  hit  me,  in  the 
war.    They  nearly  buried  me." 

"Instead,  you  buried  your  enemies,"  Matan 
said.  No  greater  mark  of  honor  could  a  man  bear 
than  the  wound  of  battle  on  his  face. 

"I  wouldn't  say  that,"  the  farmer  repeated. 
"No,  but  you  are  ill  and  cold.  Go  and  warm 
yourself  and  get  some  food.  Then  we  can  speak 
together." 

"First  1  will  tell  you,  Inkosana,  that  I  have 
come  to  fetch  home  my  father." 

"How's  that?"  the  farmer  asked  quietly,  hid- 
ing his  surprise.  "Your  father  has  lain  buried 
here  for  thirty  years." 

"I  have  come  for  his  spirit." 

They  both  were  aware  that  this  opened  up  be- 
tween them  such  imponderable  questions  that 
they  said  nothing  for  a  few  moments  until  with 
another  grave  salute  Matan  went  off,  with  his 
son,  to  the  compound  of  the  farm  laborers. 

After  the  evening  meal  the  farmer's  wife  was 
in  the  kitchen  storeroom  packing  eggs  for  market. 
She  worked  quickly  filling  the  cardboard  cartons 
while  a  young  black  woman  in  a  scarlet  head- 
cloth  and  blue  pinny  deftly  washed  and  dried 
any  that  were  marked.  Two  incandescent  lamps 
hissed  steadily  and  shed  a  strong  white  light. 
The  storeroom  beams  were  hung  with  hams  and 
sides  of  smoked  bacon,  and  phalanxes  of  jams 
and  bottled  preserves  were  ranged  along  the 
shelves.  The  women  talked  softly  while  they 
worked  and  sometimes  laughed. 

The  farmer  came  in  to  ask  about  some  ac- 
counts and  at  the  same  time  Matan  appeared 
at  the  kitchen  door.  He  had  left  his  sticks 
but  still  held  the  branch  of  wild  olive.  In  the 
strong  light  his  face  was  like  a  deeply  carved  rock 
and  the  feverish  black  eyes  alone  betrayed  him. 
The  small  boy  came  behind  him,  peering  round 
the  skirts  of  his  ragged  coat. 

"Come  inside,  Matan,"  the  farmer  said,  and 
turning  to  his  wife:  "This  is  the  man." 

The  Zulu  greeted  her  in  the  same  majestic 
way  and  she  answered,  "San'bona." 

"San'bona,"  said  the  black  maid  and  went  on 
with  her  work. 

Matan  came  closer  into  the  lamplight  and 
squatted  down  on  his  hams  in  a  ceremonial  man- 
ner. The  farmer  asked  where  he  lived  and  how 
were  his  family  and  at  this  he  looked  troubled. 


55 

several  times  passing  his  hand  o\  er  his  eyes.  He 
had  lived  in  many  places  since  he  had  left  the 
Thorn  Country.  Now  he  had  found  a  place  again 
in  the  umSuluzi  valley  and  had  a  garden  to  cul- 
tivate but  no  oxen  yet  and  no  plow. 

"And  your  family?"  the  farmer  repeated,  think- 
ing of  his  own  three  children  tucked  safe  in  their 
beds  and  his  eldest  son  away  for  the  first  term 
at  boarding  school.  When  he  glanced  again  at 
Matan  he  sensed  a  quiver  on  the  rigid  lips  and 
he  was  appalled  to  see  that  tears  had  come  to  the 
sunken,  burning  eyes. 

"This  is  my  family,"  the  Zulu  said,  reaching 
out  and  touching  his  son  with  a  bony  finger. 
"All  the  others  I  have  lost.  Two  sons  and  a 
daughter  I  lost.  My  wife  I  lost.  But  this  one 
is  left  to  me  and  now  I  have  a  place  again  and 
across  the  umSuIuzi  stream  I  can  see  where  my 
father's  kraal  stood." 

"Oh,  so  you  are  on  Dune's?" 

"I  am  on  Dune's." 

"Why  did  you  not  come  to  me?  I  would  give 
you  a  place.  You  may  build  again  where  your 
father's  huts  were  and  plow  his  old  lands.  All 
those  you  gave  up  when  you  left." 

Matan  thought  over  his  answer  and  after  clear- 
ing his  throat  he  said:  "I  am  not  ready.  Now  it 
is  this  that  my  heart  tells  me  to  say.  When  I  had 
come  to  manhood  and  we  were  of  an  age  my 
father  worked  for  yours." 

"I  remember  Makofin  well.  I  remember  the 
accident.  I  went  to  call  the  doctor  and  we  rode 
out  on  our  horses  in  the  night." 

"Inkosana,  it  was  the  long  red  wagon  that  cut 
him  nearly  in  two.  I  was  walking  behind  and 
my  father  carried  the  whip.  He  slipped  as  he 
put  one  foot  on  the  wagon  pole  and  he  fell  under 
the  wheels.  The  oxen  pulled  the  wagon  over  him 
with  a  load  of  corn  and  I  dragged  him  out  from 
under  the  Avheels— my  father.  He  was  dying.  I 
could  see." 

"He  did  not  cry  out." 

"In  the  night  he  died.  Our  people  buried  him 
here.    Inkosana,  child  of  your  father,   think  of 


Jack  Cope  grew  up  on  a  farm  in  Natal,  South 
Africa,  and  became  a  newspaperman  in  Cape  Town. 
His  three  novels  have  been  published  in  England, 
and  his  collection  of  short  stories  carries  the  title 
of  his  first  story  published  in  this  magazine,  "The 
Tame  Ox."  His  work  is  known  all  over  Europe  and 
in  1960  he  was  elected  a  Life  Fellow  of  the  Interna- 
tional Institute  of  Arts  and  Letters.  He  edits  South 
Africa's  only  English-language  literary  magazine, 
"Contrast,"  and  has  completed  his  fourth  novel, 
"Dream  Smoke." 


56 


THE     MAN     WHO     DOUBTED 


mine  too.  He  has  been  lying  here  for  thirty 
years  under  the  cold  trees  of  the  forest,  in  this 
cold  country.  He  has  been  alone.  Where  this 
red  wagon  called  Satan  is  working  and  its  trek- 
cattle  that  killed  my  father,  I  cannot  stay.  I 
went  off  and  1  have  been  everywhere.  1  have 
been  to  the  Gold  Mines,  I  worked  in  the  sugar 
cane.  I  married  and  found  a  place  with  the 
Ntulis  but  wherever  I  have  gone  evil  followed. 

"Evil  has  followed  me,"  he  said  again  hollowly 
after  a  long  pause. 

"A  son  was  born  and  I  was  glad.  Then  again, 
another  son.  I  did  not  believe  it.  I  thought  the 
evil  had  left  me.  My  first-born  withered  and 
shriveled  to  a  stick  and  he  died.  Then  I  believed 
it  again.  I  took  up  my  goods  and  drove  my  cattle 
away  and  always  the  evil  has  followed  me.  .  .  . 
No,  why  tell  you  all  that  happened?  Now  I  am 
left  with  this  stripling—" 

He  looked  round  for  the  boy  and  at  last 
caught  sight  of  him  through  the  kitchen  door 
doing  a  lively  little  dance  in  front  of  the  stove. 
He  was  a  mischievous  boy,  sprightly  and  difficult 
to  handle.  Often  he  had  to  be  given  a  cuff  on  the 
head  and  then  tears  burst  from  his  eyes.  But  a 
moment  later  he  was  dancing  and  singing  again. 

The  father  turned  away  with  a  shrug  and  then, 
as  if  by  an  afterthought,  he  said:  "So  then  I  have 
come  to  bring  my  father  home." 

The  two  white  people  waited  in  a  strained  way 
but  the  black  girl  gazed  at  him  goggle-eyed.  He 
had  expected  it,  but  now  it  devoured  his  insides. 
He  went  on,  stumbling  somewhat  over  his  words, 
to  say  he  had  been  to  one  who  knew  of  these 
things.  The  man  had  him  beat  the  ground,  and 
he  had  thrown  bones.  He  was  a  witch  doctor— 
isangoma.  He  said  the  evil  had  been  sent  by 
Makofin,  father  of  Matan,  because  he  lay  two 
days'  journey  away,  alone  in  the  cold  drizzling 
trees;  two  days  from  his  home  which  was  in  the 
Thorn  Country.  There  he  had  owned  cattle  and 
grown  corn  and  the  sun  was  hot  on  his  body. 
The  witch  doctor  had  cooked  medicine  and 
dipped  the  leaves  of  a  branch  into  his  medicine 
pot.  He  had  said:  "Watch  one  night  by  the 
grave."  Makofin's  ghost  would  climb  out  of  the 
grave,  he  had  said,  and  settle  in  the  leaves  of  the 
branch.  The  son  must  then  carry  the  ghost  home 
to  the  Thorn  Country  in  silence,  unbroken  si- 
lence, and  bury  it  there.    Peace  would  come  at 


last  to  him.  One  word  spoken  by  him  during  this 
journey  home  would  send  the  ghost  crying  back 
to  its  cold  grave. 

He  drew  out  the  branch  of  wild  olive  from 
under  his  coat  and  raising  it  he  said:  "On  this 
I  will  take  my  father  home." 

The  farmer  and  his  wife  glanced  at  each  other 
but  the  maid  flung  up  her  hands  with  a  cry  of 
fear  and  darted  out  of  the  room.  He  took  this 
sign  from  her  without  emotion  and  scarcely 
moved  his  head.  Perhaps  in  his  blood  this  sign 
of  absolute  belief  worked  profoundly,  but  it  was 
with  the  other  two  that  he  was  concerned  as  he 
put  down  the  branch  and  tried  to  compose  him- 
self. 

He  did  not  look  up  at  them,  not  because  they 
might  despise  the  witch  doctors  or  that  he  feared 
their  disbelief.  His  great  terror  lay  in  his  own 
doubt.  He  took  out  his  snuffbox  and  his  hands 
shook  as  he  uncorked  it  and  put  in  his  hand  a 
small  heap  of  snuff.  Then,  clearing  his  throat 
and  swallowing,  he  found  the  calm  he  needed  to 
state  the  point  of  his  visit: 

Perhaps  it  was  beyond  a  man  to  make  a  long 
journey  without  uttering  a  word.  His  lips  coidd 
open  in  his  sleep,  or  without  thinking  he  might 
say  something  to  a  passer-by  or  to  his  son  who 
would  not  remember  always  to  speak  correctly. 
If  a  truck  were  driving  to  the  Thorn  Country 
...  in  short,  if  the  farmer  could  take  him  home 
with  his  father's  shadow  and  his  son,  the  three 
of  them,  it  would  be  well  with  them. 

He  waited  for  the  reply,  greatly  perturbed, 
and  took  his  time  with  another  pinch  of  snuff. 
He  could  hear  his  boy  in  the  other  room,  singing 
to  himself,  while  the  two  spoke  low  in  their  own 
language.  Then  the  woman  asked:  "Matan,  did 
you  pay  the  isangoma?" 

"It  is  the  custom,"  he  mumbled  as  if  angry  at 
such  a  question. 

"What  did  you  pay  him?" 

"A  cow,"  he  said  shortly,  and  then  added:  "It 
was  my  last  cow." 

"And  do  you  really  believe  in  this?" 

It  was  the  question  that  crawled  under  his 
skin,  that  pestered  and  devoured  him,  and  with 
a  sound  like  a  groan  he  threw  back  his  head. 

"Inkosazana,  what  else  can  I  do?" 

"I  don't  know.  I  did  not  know  your  father  as 
my  husband  did,  but  would  his  soul  follow  you 


STORY     BY     JACK     COPE 


57 


with  evil?    Would  you  wish  evil  on  your  own 
son?" 

"Let  it  be!"  he  said  wildly. 

She  was  on  the  point  of  saying  more,  so  cool 
in  her  knowledge  and  good  will  that  she  would 
drive  a  hole  into  his  heart  if  only  to  enlighten 
him.  But  the  man  put  a  hand  on  her  arm  to 
quiet  her.  "Matan,  I  am  not  going  to  the  Thorn 
Country.  My  truck  is  broken  down;  it's  at  the 
garage  to  be  repaired.  But  you  can  go  with  the 
wagon  in  the  morning  and  from  the  crossroads 
the  milk  truck  will  take  you  to  the  railway.  And 
so  you  can  ride  in  the  train  down  to  the  Thorns 
and  get  home  in  one  day." 

The  Zulu  averted  his  face  without  a  word.  He 
had  only  a  few  shillings  knotted  in  a  cloth  and 
the  rail  fare  would  leave  him  penniless.  His  son 
had  come  to  the  door  and  heard  what  the  plan 
was,  and  he  skipped  delightedly  at  the  thought 
of  a  ride  in  the  milk  truck  and  in  a  train,  marvels 
he  had  never  enjoyed.  The  father  stood  up 
stiffly  and  saluted  the  white  people.  He  went  out 
leaning  one  hand  on  the  child's  shoulder  and 
with  the  other  carrying  the  bough  from  which 
he  had  not  parted  since  he  left  home. 

"What  can  you  do  with  them?"  the  woman 
said.  "Good  heavens— the  idea!" 

"You  know,  I  had  an  eerie  feeling  always  at 
Makofin's  grave.  I  can  remember  them  burying 
him  sewn  all  crouched  up  in  a  blanket,  and  they 
put  in  some  food  and  pots  and  a  knobkerrie  and 
assagai  to  see  him  on  his  way.  Makofin  was  a 
hell-fire  fighting  man  and  the  others  were  scared 
enough  of  him  alive  but  ten  times  more  scared 
of  him  dead.  The  boys  are  going  to  be  glad 
about  Matan  taking  the  old  man's  ghost  home. 
They  never  liked  the  grave  down  in  the  forest." 

"He  looks  so  ill,"  she  said.  "Fierce  but  some- 
how tortured,  eh?  Worried  to  death." 

He  merely  glanced  at  her  and  shrugged.  His 
way  with  the  Zulus  was  to  get  along  as  well  as 
he  could  without  bumping  headlong  into  them 
on  dangerous  ground,  and  he  did  not  push  things 
down  their  throats.  It  had  been  silly  of  her,  he 
thought,  to  ask  that  question.  How  could  you 
ask  a  man  whether  he  really  believed  in  a  thing 
that  went  to  the  center  of  his  life?  "About  this 
account  with  the  vet  .  .  ."  he  began. 

MATAN  walked  down  in  the  dark  from 
the  house  of  the  white  people  and  he  still 
leaned  one  hand  on  his  child.  A  moon  was  slid- 
ing in  and  out  of  the  clouds  and  the  wind  blew 
cold  and  damp.  Passing  the  open  shed,  he  saw 
the  wagon.  The  farm  used  tractors  and  motor 
vehicles  now,  but  they  kept  the  old  trek-wagon 


standing  there  with  its  heavy  iron-ringed  pole 
slung  up  as  if  ready  to  roll  out  again  on  its  fatal 
way.  Ever  since  it  had  cut  his  father  almost  in 
two  it  had  been  called  Satan  and  the  men  had 
a  kind  of  awe  for  it.  He  went  past,  looking  fear- 
fully into  the  dark  mouth  of  the  shed,  and  he 
said  nothing  but  listened  to  the  chatter  of  the 
boy  about  the  tasty  food  he  had  been  given 
in  the  kitchen. 

In  the  compound  Matan  joined  the  ring  of 
men  sitting  around  the  fire.  He  was  of  their 
clan  and  they  were  all  tied  by  ancient  blood 
bonds  one  to  another,  yet  he  had  noticed  how 
his  entry  had  put  a  hush  on  them.  They  offered 
him  food  and  went  on  dipping  their  clean  fin- 
gers in  the  black  iron  cooking  pots,  but  they 
were  like  chickens  when  a  hawk  has  flown  over. 
The  little  boy  edged  close  to  a  pot  and  soon  he 
was  eating  ravenously,  scooping  out  hot  lumps 
of  tasty  steamed  corn  and  potatoes  and  sweet 
pumpkin. 

Matan  ate  nothing  and  he  did  not  speak. 
Seated  on  a  polished  wood  block  he  leaned 
toward  the  leaping  flames  of  the  fire.  He  had 
tried  to  conceal  as  much  as  possible  the  wild- 
olive  branch  and  had  it  under  the  folds  of  his 
coat  tails.  Presently  he  opened  his  coat  and  bared 
his  bony  chest  to  the  heat.  He  had  a  skin  amulet 
hanging  at  his  throat  by  a  blackened  string  and 
a  medicine  horn  from  some  small  antelope  stuck 
as  an  earring  through  the  lobe  of  one  ear,  and 
with  his  forbidding,  deep-furrowed  face  shining 
like  oiled  wood,  he  looked  to  the  others  hardly 
a  man  at  all,  but  a  shadowing  of  death  itself. 
Some  of  the  men  got  up  and  went  out,  and  from 
under  his  heavy  brow  he  shot  them  wild,  des- 
perate glances. 

He  waited  a  little  longer,  reluctant  to  go  down 
into  the  night  and  the  forest,  and  occasionally 
he  looked  at  his  son  still  busy  at  the  cooking  pot. 
When  the  boy  could  no  longer  force  another 
mouthful  down  his  throat  but  sat  back  with  his 
stomach  drum-tight,  Matan  told  him  sharply  to 
find  a  place  among  the  boys  and  go  to  sleep.  He 
went  outside  and  came  back  with  his  hands  and 
small  shining  face  wet  from  a  good  rinsing  at  the 
tap.  He  was  thrown  a  few  clean  grain  bags  with 
which  he  made  himself  a  bed  on  the  clay  floor 
and  soon  lay  rolled  from  head  to  foot  like  a  small 
mummy  in  his  blanket. 

Suppressing  a  sigh,  Matan  got  up  and  but- 
toned his  greatcoat  close  about  him.  He  armed 
himself  with  his  stick  and  knobkerrie.  The 
others  pretended  not  to  notice  his  going.  By 
beaten  footpaths  he  picked  a  way  past  cornlands 
and  large  fields  standing  in  young  kale  and  tur- 


58 


HILARY  CORKE 


A   PSYCHIATRIST'S   SONG 


I  HELP  them  out,  I  help  them  out, 
All  those  whose  exits  are  in  doubt 
From  the  seli-extruded  spirals 
Ot  their  own  ingrowing  morals— 

Those  whose  paths  are  set  with  shadows 
And  the  snakes  breed  in  their  meadows 
And  the  thoughtweed  binds  the  gate, 
I  de-infest  their  whole  estate: 

And  those  whose  skiffs  capsize  at  sea 
And  cannot  swim,  their  legs  not  Free, 
But  in  confusion  look  to  drown, 
I  hook  them  out  and  rub  them  down. 

Old  gentlemen  who  can't  stop  j)inching 
Whatever  bottom  looks  like  flinching, 
I  teach  them  how  to  slow  that  car 
And  put  a  handbrake  on  desire: 

And  couples  whose  sex  is  in  the  head 
And  therefore  will  not  go  to  bed 
From  a  mistaken  sense  of  sin, 
I  help  them  in,  I  help  them  in. 

A  fig  for  imaginary  evils: 

I  fight  against  the  real  devils 

Of  hashed-up  circuits,  jammcd-down  switches 

And  telegraph  poles  in  the  ditches. 

These  bolt  the  doors  and  windows;  then 
The  creeping  damps  and  rots  begin. 
The  worm  grows  wily  in  the  wall 
And  down  the  family  portraits  fall; 

I  am  the  hero  with  the  axe 

Who  thrusts  the  fresh  air  through  the  cracks; 

I  sweep  the  flues,  I  scour  the  drains 

And  free  the  gutters  to  the  rains: 

While  those  who  stumble  in  the  Avide 
W^ithout-door  tempest,  void  of  pride, 
Uiitrousered,  why,  I  fetch  galo'hes 
And  plastic  hats,  and  mackintoshes. 


All  their  ills  away  I  take: 
Then  why  does  my  own  sf)r(?  head  ache? 
Look  liow  the  fish  kajj  Id  ihc  lake! 
Then  why  does  my  own  sore  hc;i(l  ache? 


nips  for  winter  cattle  feed,  the  ground  falling  all 
the  while  toward  the  fringe  of  trees.  The  moon 
gave  a  vagtie  sense  of  light  in  the  sky,  but  once 
inside  the  trees  the  darkness  became  so  close  that 
it  seemed  he  had  to  push  his  way  through  it. 
Often  he  missed  the  path,  groping  a  pace  at  a 
time  and  stumbling  on  roots  or  feeling  suddenly 
the  rasp  of  a  creeper  round  his  neck. 

He  knew  where  the  grave  was  and  approaching 
it  he  crept  even  slower.  His  eyes  were  strained 
open  to  catch  the  least  hint  of  light.  A  rustle 
went  faintly  through  the  upper  foliage  and  from 
the  occasional  touches  of  cold  on  his  face  he 
knew  a  fine  rain  had  started.  Big  drops  fell  with 
a  lone  splash  from  the  trees  on  his  head  or  down 
his  neck.  Then  he  was  at  the  grave,  sensing  the 
hollowness  of  the  dark  clearing  around  him.  He 
was  confused  at  hearing  loud  noises,  only  they 
were  in  his  head  and  the  forest  was  quiet  save 
for  the  slow  shudder  of  drops  on  the  leaves. 

He  put  his  sticks  and  the  olive  branch 
under  one  arm  and,  with  some  difficulty  over 
the  trembling  of  his  hands,  he  managed  to 
strike  a  match.  For  a  moment  the  flare  of  light 
chased  away  shadows  into  the  thicket,  and  fell 
on  the  pyramid  of  earth  and  stones  under  which 
his  father  lay  buried.  Before  the  match  flickered 
out  he  saw  the  green  moss  and  grass  on  the  gra\e 
motmd  and  the  long  trailing  beards  of  lichen 
drooping  from  the  trees;  the  ring  of  stones  sur- 
rounding the  base  of  the  mound  was  half-btiried 
in  green  mold.  A  wet  and  dreary  and  silent 
place,  and  any  spirit  lying  drowned  and  bitter 
under  the  tree  roots  would  writhe  in  its  suffo- 
cation. If  it  were  true!  It  was  starting  in  him 
again;  at  the  foot  of  his  father's  grave  itself  the 
doubt  came  at  him  and  a  cold  band  pressed 
round  his  forehead  and  temples. 

He  stood  for  a  while  and  took  hold  on  himself. 
He  must  not  dare  think  such  thoughts.  He  must 
follow  the  witch  doctor  to  the  letter— it  was  his 
last  resort.  What  else  could  he  do?  Ai!  With  a 
start  he  remembered  he  had  used  those  same 
words  to  the  white  woman.  She  had  asked  if 
he  believed.  Womanlike,  she  had  put  her  finger 
in  the  eye  of  his  sore.  What  if  he  did  doubt?  He 
must  keep  to  the  finest  hair  of  the  isangoma's  in- 
structions and,  provided  the  truth  lay  there, 
then  all  must  be  well.  He  would  regain  his 
health,  cattle  again  would  stand  in  his  kraal,  and 
his  child  grow  up  like  a  cornstalk  to  the  sun. 
And  if  the  white  people  were  right?  Could  there 
be  two  truths? 

He  tried  to  heave  himseli  up  out  of  the  claw- 
ing blackness,  straightened  his  back,  and  raised 
his  head.   "Father,  I  am  here,"  he  said.  His  breast 


: 


at  once  ielt  calmer,  and  he  began  to  make  prepa- 
rations for  the  watch  through  the  night.  He 
edged  forward  until  his  sandal  touched  the 
stones  of  the  grave;  then  he  struck  one  more 
match  and,  keeping  it  alight  in  his  cupped  hand, 
made  his  way  to  the  nearest  tree.  There  he 
settled  himself  with  his  back  to  the  moss-covered 
roots  and,  tucking  his  coat  as  well  as  possible 
around  his  knees,  he  took  the  olive  branch  in  one 
hand.  A  cold  drop  coursed  down  his  forehead 
and  nose.  It  was  no  longer  raining  and  he  found 
to  his  dread  that  he  was  in  a  heavy  sweat. 

He  sighed  and  muttered  to  himself.  He  would 
feel  better  if  something  came  to  share  his  watch, 
a  bushbuck  or  perhaps  an  ox  or  even  a  hare.  But 
it  was  a  lonely  place  and  a  little-used  path.  Cattle 
kept  the  track  open  and  maybe  at  night  the 
small  denizens  of  the  trees  would  dart  along  it 
frightened  by  the  coughing  of  a  leopard.  He 
would  welcome  a  leopard. 

The  air  seemed  to  become  warmer  and  then 
the  clouds  opened  and  moonlight  came  filtering 
down  through  the  treetops  into  the  clearing.  He 
coidd  make  out  the  shape  of  the  grave  mound 
and  at  a  distance  the  pale  streaks  against  the 
black  which  he  knew,  though  they  seemed  to 
be  moving,  were  tree  trunks.  He  had  to  close 
his  eyes  to  escape  the  appearance  that  the  trees 
were  moving  about.  After  some  time  had  passed 
he  heard  the  growl  of  thunder  and  he  thought 
he  understood  that  strange  wave  of  warmth  and 
closeness  that  was  hammering  against  his  chest 
as  if  with  soft  fists. 

Cold,  rain— rain  and  cold,  did  it  never  stop 
here  in  the  thin  high  veld?  "My  father,  I  have 
left  you  a  long  while,"  he  said,  with  his  voice 
croaking.  An  answer  came  in  another  rumble  of 
thunder.  He  waited,  thinking  of  his  father,  and 
he  began  speaking  to  him.  "My  father,  Makofin, 
son  of  Poli,  why  have  you  come  as  a  thief  and 
taken  everything  from  me?  It  was  not  so  before. 
You  were  a  fighting  man  and  born  of  great  blood 
and  your  word  was  respected.  Did  they  leave 
you  too  little  food  for  your  journey  and  have 
you  eaten  grasshoppers  on  the  bare  hill?  My 
father,  if  you  kill  me  and  my  last  son,  who  will 
be  left  to  pray  and  comfort  you— what  home  will 
you  return  to  when  you  journey  up  from  there 
below  to  see  the  sun  again?" 

He  spoke  in  the  form  of  the  old  prayers  but 
in  his  blood  was  the  feeling  that  he  should  be 
given  some  sign,  and  because  no  sign  came  he 
was  left  hollow  and  beaten.  Flashes  of  lightning 
were  flickering  palely  among  the  trees  and  the 
thunder  groaned  nearer,  thudding  on  the  ground 
as  if  some  great  beast  were  on  the  trail. 


A     STORY     BY     JACK     COPE  59 

The  wind  came  tearing  down  with  a  great  roar 
into  the  forest  and  thunder  ripped  and  boomed 
in  the  sky  striking  trees  and  hilltops  while  the 
rain  fell  in  huge  dark  waves.  Gullies  of  water 
poured  and  washed  against  him  and  he  crouched 
more  into  himself,  wet  and  shivering  and  almost 
unconscious  of  his  purpose  in  being  there. 

TH  E  rain  passed  and  the  wind  died  and 
silence  and  darkness  came  back  over  the 
forest.  He  thought  of  his  father's  ghost  in  the 
underworld  shivering  at  an  empty  pot  and  a 
dead  fire  while  the  water  from  the  cold  earth 
dripped  muddily  over  him.  Alone  he  was  too, 
and  malignant,  and  his  eyes  glaring  red  like 
those  of  a  man  wild  with  death  or  sorrow. 

The  vision  was  so  clear  and  striking  to  his 
inner  mind  that  he  thought  it  a  dream  and  he 
had  been  asleep  or  was  still  sleeping.  The  branch 
of  wild  olive  seemed  to  be  moving  in  his  hand 
and  with  a  thrill  of  horror  he  dropped  it,  then 
grabbed  at  it,  feeling  about  in  the  dark  in  case 
it  should  be  snatched  away.  When  he  had  seized 
it  again  with  a  shaking  hand  he  was  sure  that  it 
moved  of  its  own  and  so  great  a  desire  filled  him 
to  run  for  his  life  that  his  legs  began  twitching 
like  a  dog  in  its  hunting  dreams.  Closing  his 
eyes,  he  forced  his  head  and  back  against  the 
tree  until  his  muscles  stopped  jerking  and  he 
could  no  longer  feel  any  movement,  not  in  his 
legs  nor  in  the  twig  nor  the  hand  that  held  it. 

He  opened  his  eyes  vaguely  and  was  staring 
upwards.  There  was  light,  faint  light.  The  moon 
had  come  through  and  was  dropping  a  dim  ray 
among  the  still  treetops.  Here  and  there  was 
the  mere  phantom  of  a  tree  trunk.  Slowly  he 
searched  into  the  cave  of  the  clearing  and  tlien 
fixed  on  a  place  above  the  grave.  He  stared  for 
a  long  time,  not  believing  his  senses,  blinked 
slowly  and  looked  again.  Over  the  grave  stood 
a  large  white  shape,  there  was  no  mistake.  And 
as  the  moon  ran  out  of  the  clouds  and  its  light 
seeped  down  to  the  earth  the  shape  took  clearer 
form  and  he  could  see  two  dark  hollows  where 
it  would  have  eyes. 

"Makofin,  son  of  Poli,"  he  grated  out,  though 
his  lips  and  tongue  were  almost  paralyzed.  "Ha! 
do  you  come  to  turn  your  son's  bones  to  water! 
Come  with  me  home  to  the  umSuIuzi." 

He  could  now  see  two  strange  shapes  like  great 
horns  rising  above  it  and  in  a  swaying  movement 
the  head  shook.  A  cry  came  from  Matan's  throat. 
He  tried  to  struggle  to  his  feet,  rolled  to  one 
side  and  fell.  His  body  shivered  all  over  and  a 
foam  hissed  from  his  mouth  and  nostrils. 

The  moon  was  covered  by  a  dark  cloud  bank 


60 


THE     MAN     WHO     DOUBTED 


and  complete  darkness  crept  over  the  veld  and 
into  every  crevice  of  the  dripping  forest.  Far 
down  at  the  foot  of  a  tall  tree  the  black  man  lay 
fighting  for  breath  and  oblivious  of  everything. 
The  owls  flew  down  from  their  roost  in  a  ham- 
merkop's  nest,  a  leopard  made  its  coughing  grunt 
as  it  padded  along  the  trail.  A  rustling  and 
crashing  sounded  among  the  trees,  heavy  beating 
of  hooves,  and  then  the  return  of  silence. 

Still  the  man  lay  on  his  side  and  ants  began 
to  crawl  on  him.  At  the  first  lightening  of  the 
sky  he  stirred  and  tried  to  open  his  eyes.  He 
felt  blinded,  scratched  and  clawed  at  his  face 
and  then  screamed  out.  His  face  was  covered 
with  ants.  He  rolled  and  whipped  over  on  the 
grass  like  an  eel  and  by  brushing  and  beating  at 
his  face  with  his  coat  sleeves  he  cleaned  himself 
and  then  began  to  kill  off  and  shake  the  ants 
out  of  his  coat.  His  limbs  felt  weak  and  he  was 
imnerved  in  every  fiber  of  his  body.  But  in  spite 
of  his  dread  of  the  place  he  raised  his  hand  as 
steadily  as  he  could  and  said:  "Makofin,  son  of 
Poli,  I  came  in  peace.  Now  you  too,  be  no  thief. 
To  me,  your  son,  give  back  peace."  He  gathered 
up  his  sticks  and,  with  one  fearful  glance  at  it, 
took  up  also  the  wild-olive  branch. 

Then  he  set  ofi^  to  return  to  the  compound,  but 
walked  slowly  like  an  old  man.  Passing  beyond 
the  grave,  he  noticed  in  the  turf  the  hoofprints 
of  an  ox.  He  leaned  heavily  on  his  stick,  pausing 
there  for  some  moments,  deeply  shocked,  and  all 
his  doubts  came  back  with  a  new  agony.  When 
had  the  ox  stood  there— during  the  night,  or 
before?  There  was  water  in  one  of  the  hoofmarks. 
His  head  was  nodding  as  with  an  illness  when  he 
started  again,  and  at  sunrise  he  arrived  back  at 
the  compound. 

MAT  A  N  crouched  like  some  old  tree  trunk 
among  the  milk  cans  on  the  wagon.  It 
seemed  that  in  contrast  to  his  gloom  and  silence 
and  the  awe  he  inspired  in  the  other  farm  work- 
ers, the  small  boy  had  become  all  the  more 
sprightly.  He  danced  and  skipped  alongside  the 
cart,  threw  stones  at  a  flock  of  starlings,  whistled 
gaily  or  sang  to  himself  at  every  step.  1 'ie  farm 
workers  kept  wide  of  the  man  whom  tliey  be- 
lieved to  be  carrying  the  ghost  of  his  father  but 
the  boy  had  almost  taken  command  now  that 
he  had  the  task  of  guiding  him  home.  At  the 
crossroads,  Matan  transferred  in  silence  to  the 
heavy  milk  truck  while  loud  explanations  were 
made  and  shouts  of  ama/cment  exchanged  with 
the  loading  ( rcw.  Then  the  truck  started  off;  the 
boy  shrilled  and  laughed  and  opened  his  mouth 
to  feel  the  roar  of  wind  in  his  ciieeks. 


At  the  railhead  the  child  made  all  the  explana- 
tions while  his  father  fumbled  open  his  damp 
cloth  and  handed  over  one  by  one  the  shillings 
and  florins  to  pay  the  fare.  Then,  aboard  the 
train,  the  boy  dashed  up  and  down  the  corridors, 
hung  out  on  the  balcony  rails,  and  scrambled 
over  people's  feet  in  the  crowded  compartment 
where  his  father  sat,  stony  and  silent  with  lips 
sewn  together  in  a  terrible  bitterness.  In  a  shrill 
voice  the  boy  explained  that  the  olive  branch 
had  been  doctored  and  on  it  was  roosting  none 
other  than  the  ghost  of  his  grandfather. 

With  one  accord  the  passengers  yelled  out  and 
made  a  concerted  dash  to  get  out  at  the  door, 
struggling  and  cursing  and  knocking  the  child 
over  in  their  hurry  to  escape.  When  the  last  of 
them  had  disappeared,  there,  lying  in  the  middle 
of  the  floor,  was  a  silver  sixpence.  The  boy 
picked  it  up  with  a  chirp  of  pleasure  and  ran 
after  the  gabbling  passengers.  He  tossed  it  in 
the  air  and  caught  it,  shouting:  "Who  lost  this? 
Who  lost  this?"  They  were  too  angry  or  scared 
to  notice  him  and  so  he  tied  it  into  a  ragged 
corner  of  his  vest. 

The  passengers  complained  about  the  ghost 
and  some  minutes  later  the  ticket  examiner  came 
to  restore  order.  "You  can't  travel  with  a  ghost," 
he  said  to  Matan  and  was  answered  by  a  glimmer 
of  anger  from  eyes  so  siniken  and  reddened  that 
even  he  was  taken  aback. 

"I'm  not  sure,  you  may  need  another  ticket 
for  the  spook,"  he  said.  And  Matan,  seeing  the 
smile  of  contempt,  tinned  away  his  face  to  hide 
his  rage  and  dismay.    "Why  don't  you  answer?" 

"He  is  my  father  and  he  has  lost  his  voice," 
the  boy  said. 

"Well,  he'll  have  to  chuck  the  ghost  out  of 
the  window  or  ride  on  the  balcony.  I  can't  have 
the  corridor  blocked  with  passengers." 

Matan  rose  unsteadily  and  made  his  way  out 
along  the  corridor  and  to  the  balcony,  still  grip- 
ping his  sticks  and  bundle  and  his  olive  bough. 
The  other  passengers  hurried  past  or  pretended 
not  to  see  the  thin  and  haggard  man  keeping  his 
balance  precariously  as  the  train  jolted  and 
swayed  on  the  curves  and  gradients. 

There  he  stayed  until  the  train  pulled  in  at 
the  station  of  Colenso  alongside  the  broad 
muddy  Tugela  River  with  the  great  water  towers 
and  smokestacks  of  ilic  central  power  station 
rising  like  a  giant  out  of  the  bush-dotted  and 
almost  empty  plain.  Matan  climbed  down  to  the 
piailorm,  made  his  way  across  to  a  bench,  and, 
sinking  down  exhausted,  watched  the  train  pnl! 
out.  He  had  not  eaten  for  two  days  and  a  lever 
ran  in  his  veins. 


A     STORY     BY     JACK     COPE 


61 


The  boy  raced  up  and  down  in  a  daze  of 
happiness.  He  loved  the  machines  and  heavy 
electric  engines,  the  maze  of  power  lines,  the 
intricate  transformer  plant  where  black  men 
in  smart  uniforms  were  at  work,  the  hiss  and 
whirr  of  strange  things,  and,  high  above  all,  the 
great  plumes  of  smoke  going  up  in  the  blue 
sky.  He  would  one  day  work  in  the  power  sta- 
tion, he  thought.  His  lather  sat  on  the  bench 
recovering  liis  strength  while  the  boy  played, 
dodging  among  passengers  and  porters.  He  un- 
tied the  sixpence  to  play  with  and  threw  it  in 
the  air. 

Matan  watched  the  boy  and  thought  of  con- 
tinuing his  journey,  this  time  on  foot  over  the 
ridge  and  into  the  umSuluzi  valley.  He  saw  the 
coin  make  a  bright  arc,  land  on  the  platform, 
and  roll  over  the  edge.  His  son  looked  down  at 
the  track  where  his  sixpence  had  fallen.  A  train 
drawn  by  a  green  electric  locomotive  was  coming 
quietly  and  swiftly  into  the  platform  and  the 
boy,  without  seeing  it,  was  on  the  point  of  leap- 
ing down  to  the  track. 

From  the  bench  Matan  could  not  reach  him 
in  time.  "Blicka!"  he  yelled.  "lyez'  isitimela!" 
("Watch  out— the  train's  coming!")  The  child 
turned  and,  seeing  the  locomotive,  flinched  back 
as  if  struck.  The  passenger  train  glided  through 
the  station  without  halting  and  after  the  last 
coach  and  the  van  had  passed  by  he  looked  down 
and  there  was  his  coin  still  lying  in  the  ballast. 
He  jumped  lightly  over  to  recover  it. 

Quickly  he  climbed  up  again,  clutching  the 
sixpenny  piece  in  his  fist,  and  ran  to  his  father. 
With  shining  eyes,  he  said:  "Father,  you  spoke!" 

Matan  had  the  branch  across  his  knees  and 
with  lips  half  drawn  back  from  his  teeth  in  an 
expression  like  a  snarl  he  watched  it  intently. 
He  did  not  hear  or  see  his  son.  But  nothing 
happened  to  the  smallest  leaf  on 
the  branch.  He  did  not  quite 
know  what  he  had  expected.  Per- 
haps, if  the  long  shadow  of  his 
father  had  indeed  been  riding 
on  the  bough,  it  would  have 
made  some  sign  of  its  departure, 
withering  the  leaves  or  setting 
th,em  on  fire.  Yet  nothing  hap- 
pened and  the  terrible  suspicion 
swelled  again  in  him  that  there 
was  no  bringing  home  of  his 
ancestors,  there  was  no  averting 
the  evil  following  him,  no  way 
of  controlling  his  destiny.  What 
must  be  must  be. 

"Come,"  he  said  mildly  to  the 


boy.  "Let  us  go."  He  walked  now  with  an  effort 
and  his  tall  straight  back  was  slightly  stooped. 
A  fierce  energy  drove  him  on  and  the  boy  fre- 
quently ran  a  few  paces  or  jogged  at  his  father's 
side,  clinging  to  the  ragged  and  flapping  great- 
coat. 

They  kept  for  some  miles  to  the  dusty  district 
road.  The  sun's  heat  danced  from  the  hard  clay 
and  shale  and  in  the  bush  the  sun  beetles  droned 
and  shrilled.  The  man  kept  his  eyes  fixed  ahead 
and  passing  any  stranger  he  merely  raised  his 
free  hand  in  a  silent  gesture.  "My  father  cannot 
speak,"  the  boy  explained,  and  they  hurried  on. 
Down  through  the  thorn  scrub  they  turned  on  an 
ancient  footpath,  and  they  did  not  slacken  pace. 
Sweat  dripped  from  Matan's  chin  and  the  boy 
trotting  behind  gasped  for  breath,  his  bare  feet 
burning. 

A  few  times  they  stopped  at  a  stream  to  drink 
a  little  water  and  rinse  their  faces,  and  they 
crossed  the  slow-running  umSuluzi  at  a  drift. 
At  last  they  came  to  their  home,  two  thatch  bee- 
hive huts  set  at  the  foot  of  a  rocky  hill,  and  an 
old  woman,  who  was  a  relative  of  Matan's 
mother,  stopped  grinding  corn  and  fetched  him 
a  drink  in  a  calabash.  She  regarded  him  with  in- 
tense alarm  and  had  noticed  how  he  had  changed 
for  the  worse,  but  she  tried  to  keep  her  face 
turned  aside  and  did  not  speak  except  in  greeting. 
He  left  the  boy  with  her  and  from  the  black- 
ened thatch  inside  his  hut  drew  out  a  long- 
bladed  fighting  assagai.  He  placed  the  branch 
at  the  back  of  the  hut  with  a  bowl  of  milk  and 
went  out  again  into  the  afternoon  sun,  now 
carrying  his  assagai  as  well  as  his  sticks.  At  the 
drift  across  the  umSuluzi  he  slopped  to  polish 
the  blade  of  his  spear,  taking  fine  sand  and  a 
piece  of  pumice  to  hone  off  the  spots  of  rust.  He 
washed  it  down  in  the  clear  water  and  dried  the 
glittering  blade  on  his  sleeve.  It 
was  illegal  and  dangerous  to 
carry  such  a  weapon  but  he  now 
cared  little  for  that. 

A  quick  walk  through  the 
bush  brought  him  at  sunset  to 
a  wealthy  kraal  where  many 
cattle  and  goats  were  being 
penned  by  small  boys  for  the 
night.  The  huts  were  built  of 
stone  with  stout  tliatch  roofs  out 
of  which  thrust  poles  and  sticks 
surmounted  by  various  skulls 
and  horns  of  animals  and  blown- 
up  gall  bladders.  One  hut  alone 
was  of  the  traditional  all-thatch 
pattern  and  was  even  weathered 


62 


THE     MAN     WHO     DOUBTED 


and  dilapidated  in  a  kind  ot  mock  humility,  and 
here  he  tound  the  isangoma  expecting  him. 

"You  have  spoken,  you  opened  your  mouth!" 
the  man  accused  him  without  any  ceremony. 

"I   have  spoken— what  matter?" 

"Did  you  remember  what  1  said?  ' 

"I  remembered."  Matan  turned  on  him  fero- 
ciously and  glared  almost  maddened  at  the 
crafty  and  intelligent  face  obscure  in  the  growing 
darkness. 

"Why  have  you  come  here  armed?" 

"I  came  to  hear  what  you  will  say.  I  want  to 
know  if  my  father  has  returned.  I  want  to  know 
if  I  will  be  given  peace,  I  and  my  son." 

"How  can  I  say?  You  have  broken  the  com- 
mand of  the  spirits." 

"I  paid  you  my  last  cow  to  do  this— and  you 
will  do  it,  son  of  Noqomfela." 

"Have  you  come  to  threaten  me,  one  who  can 
destroy  you  with  his  little  finger?" 

"I  must  have  an  answer.  Come  with  mc  now 
and  attend  to  the  burial  of  my  father's  shadow. 
The  grave  is  ready.  And  if  you  say  he  has  not 
come  home  thert  I  swear  to  you,  evildoer,  I  will 
send  your  ghost  to  fetch  him." 

He  laid  his  palm  along  the  shining  blade  of 
the  spear  to  make  himself  clear  to  the  doctor 
and  then  stooping  under  the  low  door  he  came 
out.  In  single  file  they  returned  on  the  path 
through  the  bush.  The  isangoma  walked  ahead, 
a  slight  old  man  wearing  a  monkey-fur  cap  and 
carrying  a  thin  blackened  wand.  It  was  dusk. 

The  grave  was  in  a  hollow  near  the  river  and 
over  it  rose  the  pale-dusty  ominous  trunk  of 
a  fever  tree.  Matan  had  dug  it  himself  before 
leaving.  He  brought  the  branch  of  wild  olive  and 
some  pots  of  beer  and  corn  and  he  led  a  goat  on 
a  thong  for  the  sacrifice.  He  quickly  cut  the 
goat's  throat  with  the  sharp  edge  of  his  assagai 
blade  and  'disemboweled  it.  While  he  struck  a 
match  the  witch  doctor  studied  the  fat  on  the 
entrails  and  slit  out  the  gall  bladder.  The  match 
went  out  and  now  the  moon  shone  down  on 
them  from  a  clear  black  sky.  By  its  light  Matan 
climbed  down  into  the  grave  and  carefully  ])laced 
the  pots  of  food  and  beer.  When  he  raised  him- 
self he  saw  the  other  had  scratched  together 
some  twigs  and  lit  a  small  fire.  On  it  he  sprinkled 
powder  from  a  horn  and  a  thick,  acrid  smoke 
hissed  out,  flowing  like  a  liquid  down  the  lip 
of  the  new  grave.    Matan  coughed  heavily. 

"Leave  your  weapon  too,"  the  doctor  said. 
But  he  gripped  the  gleaming,  bloodstained  spear 
all  the  tighter  and  began  slowly  to  dimb  oul.  He 
was  weak  and  heavy  in  his  limbs,  fighting  tena- 
ciously to  keep  his  balance.    The  fever  raced  in 


his  veins  and  his  head  was  ringing.  Now  he  was 
out  and  the  isangoma  stood  to  face  him. 

"Has  my  father's  long  shadow  returned?"  he 
demanded. 

"He  has  returned." 

"Then  you  lied  to  me.  Words  escaped  my 
mouth  and  still  you  say  he  is  here.  This  way  or 
that  way  you  are  lying." 

"It  was  too  far  for  him  to  fly  back  to  the 
umLambongwenya  so  he  continued  the  journey 
with  you.    He  is  here,  he  is  satisfied." 

"This  is  another  lie.  I  have  not  heard  his 
voice." 

"You  do  not  hear  and  see  because  yoiu'  life  is 
nearing  an  end.   Son  of  Makofin,  you  are  dying." 

"That  is  at  least  the  truth,"  he  said  slowly  and 
bitterly,  leaning  on  the  haft  of  his  assagai.  "I  feel 
it  ...  I  will  not  live  many  days." 

"You  have  given  i.your  life  for  your  father,  and 
for  your  son." 

"Then  let  us  die  together,"  Matan  cried  out, 
raising  the  spear  in  a  sudden  whirl  of  his  thin 
but  powerful  arm.  The  witch  doctor  shrieked  as 
he  stepped  back. 

AT  sunrise  the  boy  came  to  search  for  his 
father  and  found  him  lying  calm  and  serene 
on  his  back  with  his  head  propped  on  the  roots 
of  the  fever  tree  and  his  feet  toward  the  open 
grave.  Stuck  fast  inches  deep  into  the  bole  of 
the  tree  was  his  stabbing  assagai. 

"How  is  it  with  my  father?"  he  asked  with  a 
beating  heart. 

The  man  looked  up  gauntly  and  seeing  his 
son  his  eyes  softened.  "It  goes  well  with  me. 
Is  the  other  here,  the  son  of  Noqomfela?" 

"No." 

"Look  about— is  he  not  lying  stabbed?" 

"No,  he  is  nowhere." 

"Look  for  my  spear  then." 

"It's  here,  in  the  tree." 

He  raised  his  burning  eyes  and  saw  the  haft 
and  blade  of  his  assagai  standing  out  from  the 
tree  trunk.  At  that  he  sighed  as  if  greatly  re- 
lieved. 

"When  you  are  old  enough,"  he  said  with 
difficulty,  "get  back  the  place  of  youi  fathers 
and  live  there  in  peace.  Let  them  bury  me  in 
the  same  grave  which  I  dug  for  Makofin.  Now 
we  are  home.  One  day  you  may  have  cattle 
again,  and  men  children  and  girl  children.  I 
cannot  give  you  anything." 

The  boy  twisted  out  of  a  knot  in  his  vest  the 
coin  he  had  picked  up.  "Look,  I  have  a  sixj)cnce. 
J  will  grow  big  and  have  boots  to  wear  and  work 
at  the  power  station." 

Harper's  Magazine,  August  1961 


Our  National  Talent 
for  Offending  People 


By    D.    H.    RADLER 


/  drive  carefully  down  a  narroxv  street  in 
Honduras,  eyes  squinting  against  the  tropical 
sun.  My  old  sedan,  mud-splaslied  from  fording 
the  rivers,  rattles  over  the  bumps.  A  group  of 
small  children  standing  in  the  street  watch  me 
pass.  One  finds  a  stone  at  his  feel  and  Inirls  it 
against  the  battered  car. 

"Vaya  gringo!"  he  shouts.  "Yanqui  go  home." 

The  other  children  take  up  the  cry,  running 
gleefully  on  their  bare,  dusty  feet. 

"Yanqui,  go  home." 

An  American  newspaper  says  that  U.  S.— Latin 
American  relations  arc  based  only  on  money— if 
we  gave  more  foreign  aid  we  ivould  be  better 
liked.  The  writer,  ivlio  is  described  as  "no  stran- 
ger to  Latin  America,"  spent  just  three  weeks  in 
San  Jose,  Costa  Rica,  covering  the  Organization 
of  American  States  conference,  a?id  he  visited 
Havana  "to  analyze  the  Castro  phenomenon." 
He  is  convinced  that  Uncle  Sam  "is  bound  to  be 
unpopular"  merely  because  he  is  "a  rich  uncle." 

Did  the  little  boy  who  threw  the  rock  read 
my  newspaper?  Would  more  foreign  aid  ynake 
him   throw  orchids  instead? 


July  4:  Independence  Day  in  the  United 
States.  Here  in  Honduras,  my  friend  Don  Fausto 
insists  that  I  go  with  him  to  the  party  at  the 
American  consulate.  There  is  a  new  consuhir 
official  and  he  wants  to  meet  him. 

"I  should  think  the  last  one  was  enough  for 
you,"  I  rib  him. 

Don  Fausto  is  a  large  landowner  and  cm- 
ploys  many  workers.  The  former  official  was  a 
dedicated  unionist.  While  he  was  here,  the 
counter  of  the  consulate  was  covered  with  AFL- 
CIO  pamphlets,  in  Spanish,  touting  the  benefits 
of  unionism.  Leaflets  explained  how  to  organize 
and  bargain,  even  how  to  stage  a  strike.  Don 
Fausto  had  been  nearly  apoplectic  over  this,  but, 
Stateside-educated  aiul  a  baseball  fan,  he's  for- 
giving. (The  official  was  transferred,  finally,  to 
Havana.) 

"The  new  one's  bound  to  be  better,"  Don 
Fausto  laughs.  His  English  carries  a  Hoosier 
drawl— he  took  his  engineering  degree  at  Rose 
Poly  in  Terre  Haute. 

Reluctantly  I  go  with  him,  although  I  find  the 
party  in  questionable  taste.  Why  advertise  it, 
in  English,  in  the  local  Spanish-language  paper? 


64 


OUR     TALENT     FOR     OFFENDING      PEOPLE 


Why  invite  "the  American  community  and  tran- 
sient Americans?"  We  stand  near  the  drink 
table,  chatting  with  the  Costa  Rican  consul.  One 
of  the  local  Company  executives  who  can't  speak 
Spanish  joins  us  and  we  switch  to  English.  The 
Costa  Rican  speaks  it  even  better  than  Don 
Fausto,  without  a  trace  of  accent.  I  hope  that 
my  Spanish  is  as  good,  but  1  doubt   that  it  is. 

A  man  I  haven't  seen  before  drifts  toward  us. 
Flabby  and  pale,  he's  obviously  new  to  the 
trojjics.  He  joins  us,  shakes  hands  all  around, 
introduces  himself  as  the  new  official.  He 
doesn't  listen  for  our  names  or  ask  about  oiu" 
connections.  Instead,  Don  Fausto  asks  him 
where  he  went  to  school  and  he  names  one  of 
the  Ivy  League  colleges. 

"Rose  Poly,"  Don  Fausto  offers  proudly. 

"Oh,"  the  official  replies. 

A  group  of  newcomers  arrives,  talking  ex- 
citedly in  Spanish  about  the  si/e  of  the  party, 
the  [)robable  cost  of  the  new,  modern  biulding, 
and  where  are  the  drinks.  Making  a  face,  the 
official  excuses  himself. 

"Got  to  go  talk  with  the  natives  in  their  bar- 
barous language,"  he  says. 

The  Costa  Rican,  a  true  diplomat,  asks  if  I'd 
like  another  drink,  I  mumble  an  embarrassed 
thank-you-but-no,  and  Don  Fausto  and  I  leave 
the  party. 

"Goddamn  gringo,"  Don  Fausto  mutters. 

September  15:  Independence  Day  in  Honduras. 
All  around  me,  the  stir  of  celebration— fire- 
crackers  popping,  bands  playing,  parades  in  the 
street,  horns  beeping,  people  shouting.  On  this 
day  139  years  ago,  Honduras  fought  free  of 
Spanish  rule.  Since  then,  it  has  moved  from  the 
grip  of  one  dictator  to  anotlier—the  scene  of  135 
rexjohitions,  almost  one  year.  Now,  tinder  a  freely 
elected  deynocratic  regime,  the  people  really  cele- 
brate this  day. 

In  front  of  me,  a  pair  of  American  tourists. 
Each  holds  a  camera;  each  carries,  slung  from 
his  shoulder,  a  loaded  gadget  bag.  But  neither 
shoots  a  picture. 

"Pretty  crummy,"  one  says. 

"Yeah,"  replies  the  other.  "Mexico  puts  on  a 
helluva   lot   better  show." 

Several  bystanders  who  understand  English 
turn  to  look  at  them;  then,  with  the  ineffable 
raised-eyebroiv  Latin  shrug,  go  back  to  xoatching 
the  parade.  The  tourists  shoulder  their  xvay 
through  the  crowd,  looking  petuhnil. 

It  is  quiet  in  the  nearby  Company  town.  In 
compliance  tvith  the  law,  the  Company  has  re- 
leased its  thousands  of  workers  for  the  day. 
Beyond  this,  and  a  congratulatory  ad  in  the  local 
paper,  it  does  not  participate  in  the  festivities. 
The  Hondrirans,  short  on  money  but  long  o)i 
enthusia.sm ,  have  squeezed  into  Microbuses  or 
have  walked  the  ten  miles  to  San  Pedro  to  cele- 


brate. Their  stilt-legged  barracks  are  quiet,  ham- 
mocks .sivinging  empty  in  the  afternoon  breeze. 
The  Americans  in  "The  Zone"  are  inside  their 
houses,  their  maids  gone  for  the  day. 

The  contrast  between  the  Zone  and  the 
workers'  barrnroncs  springs  out  at  you  noiv.  On 
the  one  hand,  looodcn  multiple-family  barracks, 
iinpainfcd  and  unscreened,  rising  on  stilts  over 
a  patcJi  of  sa)id  or  concrete;  in  The  Zone,  one- 
and  two-story  houses  icith  large,  screened  porches, 
set  in  the  middle  of  spacious  landscaped  yards 
maintai)ied  by  natixie  gardeners.  Housing  is  as- 
signed by  position,  trot  by  nationality.  But  most 
of  tJie  "first-class  employees"  are  American.  It 
is,  after  all,  an  American  company.  Only  its  land 
and  its  labor  are  Honduran. 

I  leave  the  north  coast  and  drive  into  the  in- 
terior. Ry  suppertime  I  am  in  Siguatepeque, 
where  a  boy  once  threw  a  stone  at  my  car.  This 
is  cooler  country,  weH  located  halfway  between 
Hondiuas'  two  most  imjiortant  cities,  right  on 
the  main  highway,  up  nearly  4.000  feet.  There 
are  many  tourists  and  other  transients,  many  re- 
tired people.  Quite  a  few  are  Americans.  There 
are  also  a  mission  school  and  hospital  and  several 
small  businesses  run  by  Americans. 

The  diners  in  the  pension  look  up  and  nod  as 
I  enter,  then  resume  their  heated  conversation. 

"And,  did  you  hear  what  those  two  U.  S. 
Senators  said  last  week?" 

"About   what?" 

".■\bout  that  goddamn  Trujillo.  They  said  he's 
'the  ideal  leader'  for  'those  countries'  and  that 
he's  made  more  progress  without  American  aid 
than  any  of  us  have  with  it." 

"I  thought  the  U.S.  went  along  with  the  San 
Jose  resolution  condemning  the  cabron." 

"They  did,  but  you  can  see  what  they  really 
think  from  what  those  Senators  said.  Imagine, 
one  is  chairman  of  the  Agricidture  Committee 
and  the  other  of  the  Judicial  Committee." 

"Carajo!    Goddamn  gringos!" 

"Didn't  the  House  of  Representatives  refuse 
to  cut  Trujillo's  sugar  quota?  They  cut  Castro's 
but  not  Trujillo's.  That  shows  you  where  they 
stand." 

"Sure.  Trujillo  owns  most  of  the  sugar— and 
he's  forever  entertaining  gringo  politicians  or 
giving  'em  medals." 

In  the  morni)}g,  I  awaken  again  in  La  Es- 
pertniza.  the  lovely  mountain  toxvn  xvhere  I  live. 
High  in  the  southxvestern  hills,  roe  are  some  three 
hours'  drive  off  the  main  road.  Fexo  Americans 
come  here;  xce  hax'e  no  consulate;  the  Company 
has  no  operations  here.  As  I  stroll  down  the 
street  f)ast  the  fyark,  a  bunch  of  little  hoys  pass 
on  their  xoay  to  school. 

"Hold,  gringo,"  they  call.  "Que  le  vaya  bien. 
May  all  go  xi'rll  xeith  you." 


BY     D.     H.     RADLER 


65 


AL  L  of  these  incidents  have  taken  place 
here  in  Honcknas  within  the  past  couple 
of  years.  I've  seen  similar  occurrences  in  Mexico, 
Cuba,  Guatemala,  Nicaragua,  Costa  Rica,  Pan- 
ama, and  Colombia.  I  have  no  reason  to  believe 
that  anything  different  is  going  on  anywhere  in 
Latin  America.  But  I  am  convinced  that  until 
something  cjuite  different  starts  happening,  the 
Ihiited  States  will  continue  to  fail  here,  as  it  is 
assuredly  failing  now— no  matter  how  many  mil- 
lions we  pour  into  this  area. 

Despite  what  the  hit-and-run  newspaper  pun- 
dits write  after  a  one-  or  two-week  flying  visit, 
we  are  in  trouble  in  Latin  America  and  all  of 
our  money  isn't  helping  our  cause  here.  And 
odd  as  it  may  seem  to  the  nation  that  gave  birth 
to  Madison  Avenue,  one  strong  reason  we  aren't 
liked  in  Latin  America  is  simply  that  we  aren't 
very  likable.  In  fact,  it  almost  seems  that  Ameri- 
cans here  are  intent  upon— and  eminently  suc- 
cessfid  at— losing  friends  and  alienating  people. 

Since  I  live  in  Honduras  and  know  it  better 
than  the  other  Latin  American  countries,  I'll  use 
Honduras  as  my  main  example.  What  happens 
here,  however,  is  not  very  different  from  wliat 
happens  elsewhere  south  of  the  border. 

Here  we  are  known  primarily  through  two 
banana  companies  (Standard  Fruit  Company  and 
the  larger  LInited  Fruit  Comjiany),  a  handful  of 
State  Department  personnel,  and  the  American 
publications  that  are  read  here— chiefly,  Time 
magazine's  Latin  American  edition,  in  English. 
Many,  many  Latin  Americans  know  English— 
;!  fact  we  tend  to  forget  when  we  talk  about  them 
in  their  presence.  English  is  taught  in  the  schools 
here  and  is  spoken,  or  at  least  understood,  by 
many  ordinary  citizens,  not  just  by  the  Stateside- 
educated  business  and  professional  men  and 
politici-nn.  ^Vhen  I  first  came  to  La  Esperanza, 
one  of  the  most  remote  towns  in  the  country,  the 
i;i\  collector  greeted  me:  "Good!  Now  I've  got 
'  chance  to  practice  my  English."  He  had  never 
!;een  to  tlic  States,  didn't  plan  to  go,  but  wanted 


D.  H.  Radler  fell  in  love  ivith  Latin  America 
when  he  went  there  in  1958  to  establish  a  research 
information  project  for  United  Fruit.  Noiv  a  free- 
lance ivriter  in  Honduras,  he  explores  the  country 
and  meets  the  people,  often  riding  on  horseback 
remote  from  the  highivays.  He  has  written  many 
articles  and  is  a  contributing  editor  of  "'Industrial 
Research.''  Formerly  on  the  staff  of  Purdue  Uni- 
versity as  a  science  ivriter,  he  collaborated  on  two 
books  (''The  American  Teen-ager"  and  "Success 
Through  Play"). 


to  improve  his  English  "because  it's  an  impor- 
tant language."  How  many  Americans  feel  that 
way  about  Spanish,  spoken  by  well  over  two  hun- 
dred million  people? 

To  Hondurans  and  other  Central  Americans, 
the  banana  companies  represent  American  cap- 
italism; the  Embassy  and  Consulate  stand  for 
American  government;  the  press,  notably  Time, 
says  what  the  American  people  think  about  their 
neighbors  to  the  South.  All  have  failed  to  present 
our  country  effectively.  It  is  worth  examining 
why. 

The  Comfyanies 

Initially,  the  banana  companies  came  here 
under  concessions  from  local  governments  grant- 
ing them  huge  acreages  in  return  for  their 
investments,  especially  the  construction  of  much- 
needed  railroads. 

Honduras,  perennially  the  leader  in  efforts 
toward  Central  American  federation,  hoped  for 
an  east-west  rail  link  to  encourage  union.  By 
1924  it  had  awarded  nearly  200,000  acres  of  rich 
banana  land  to  United  Fruit  alone,  as  compen- 
sation for  future  railroad  construction.  Today, 
Honduras  possesses  900  miles  of  railroad— but 
they  are  all  within  the  banana  zone  and  Teguci- 
galpa remains  one  of  the  few  national  capitals 
in  the  world  without  rail  communication. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  banana  companies 
have  turned  useless  jungles  and  swamps  into 
productive  farms.  They  have  built  homes,  hos- 
pitals, schools,  and  clubs;  have  maintained  vast 
health  and  sanitation  programs,  virtually  eradi- 
cating malaria  in  their  own  areas;  have  con- 
sistently paid  their  men  more  than  any  other 
rural  workers  in  the  country.  In  addition,  the 
taxes  and  wages  they  pay  are  larger  by  far  than 
those  of  any  other  industry  in  the  country- 
United  Fruit  alone  contributes  almost  one-sixth 
of  Honduras'  gross  national  product. 

UF  has  also  endowed  and  hcljied  support  the 
Central  .American  School  of  Agriculture  at  Zam- 
orano,  near  Tegucigalpa;  maintains  a  vast  col- 
lection of  economic  tropical  crops  at  Lancetilla, 
near  the  port  of  Tela;  has  sent  out,  free,  millions 
of  seedlings  to  sjjread  new  and  better  fruits,  vege- 
tables, and  timber  trees  throughout  the  American 
tropics. 

WHiy,  then,  is  there  such  feeling  against  the 
Company?  Part  of  the  answer  is  sheer  size— UF 
is  the  dominant  factor  in  the  national  economy. 
Operating  throughout  Guatemala,  Costa  Rica, 
Panama,  Colombia.  Ecuador,  and  the  Dominican 
Rei)ublic,  it  is  known  as  el  pnlpo,  "The  Octo- 
pus." Another  reason  lies  in  its  special  contracts 


V 


66 


OUR     TALENT     FOR     OFFENDING     PEOPLE 


with  the  government.  Hondurans  charge  that 
these  agreements  have  subjected  their  national 
resources  to  foreign  control  and  their  local 
politics  to  foreign  interference. 

It  is  conceivable  that  different  policies  could 
have  made  UF,  which  has  done  much  for  Hon- 
duras, a  welcome  partner.  Instead,  the  Company 
seems  consistently  to  have  pinsued  a  course  cal- 
culated to  make  it— and  American  industry  in 
general— warmly  disliked. 

No  attempt  has  been  made  to  let  Hondurans 
purchase  stock  in  the  local  Companies,  thus  al- 
lowing them  participation  in  ownership  if  not 
control;  no  director  or  top  executive  of  the 
present  Company  is  a  Latin  American,  few  even 
have  much  tropical  experience.  Local  managers 
are  all  Americans,  as  are  most  department  heads 
and  other  executives.  For  years,  executive 
trainees  have  been  shipped  in  from  the  States 
rather  than  recruited  locally.  (This  year,  at  last, 
some  graduates  of  the  UF-endowed  Zamorano 
agricultural  school  are  being  trained  by  the  Com- 
pany for  senior  agricultural  positions.  But  all 
"dollar  employees"— those  hired  in  the  States- 
are  paid  on  a  higher  wage  scale  than  those  hired 
locally.) 

Instead  of  integrating  its  American  personnel 
into  the  local  communiiy,  United  Fruit  main- 
tains Company  towns.  Housing  and  other  facili- 
ties, including,  for  example,  use  of  Company 
vehicles,  are  a  function  of  position— which  means 
that  the  American  jefes  conspicuously  have  the 
best.  As  a  direct  residt  of  this  segregation,  many 
Company  people,  and  even  more  of  their  wives, 
speak  Spanish  poorly  or  not  at  all,  even  after 
years  of  residence  here.  Their  parties  and  leisure 
activities  might  well  take  place  back  home:  the 
Latin  hosts  feel  shut  out  on  their  own  home 
grotind. 

The  Company  does  nothing  to  discourage  this 
effective  apartheid— it  maintains  no  orientation 
program  for  American  employees,  doesn't  de- 
mand Spanish  language  ability  or  teach  the  lan- 
guage (except  in  a  few  essential  cases  of  men 
who  will  supervise  farm  workers  speaking  only 
Spanish),  in  no  way  rewards  employees  who 
adapt  to  the  local  environment  and  make  friends 
for  the  Company.  Instead,  UF  runs  an  American 
school  for  all  U.  S.  children  as  well  as  some 
Latins— who  are  chastised  for  speaking  even  a 
word  of  Spanish,  "because  we're  teaching  English 
here!" 

Recently,  UF  has  given  much  proud  publicity 
to  a  plan  for  transferring  the  ownership  of  its 
land  to  local  farmers  if  ihcy  agree  to  raise 
Ijanana.'i  (jn  it.    UF  will  bu)   their  product,  ship 


and  market  it,  thereby  "going  into  partnership" 
with  the  nationals  in  the  countries  where  it  oper- 
ates. However,  labor  leaders  point  out  that  the 
Company  will  thus  avoid  most  of  its  current  legal 
obligations  to  maintain  schools  and  hospitals, 
provide  labor  benefits  such  as  vacation  with  pay, 
terminal  leave,  etc.  Government  agronomists 
note  that  most  of  the  land  in  question  is  now 
unsuitable  for  production  of  the  market-favoriic 
Gros  Michel  banana  because  of  a  soil  fungus  im- 
ported by  UF  on  planting  material  in  years  past. 
Other  critics  wonder  why  the  company  is  not 
extending  its  "partnership  plan"  to  its  highly 
productive,  low-cost  producing  zone  on  Panama's 
west  coast. 

The  irony  of  such  close-fisted  policies  is  that 
they  are  not  paying  off.  Toward  the  end  of 
1958  the  Company's  stock  sold  at  $52  and  was 
considered  an  eminently  blue  chip.  In  May  of 
this  year,  it  was  selfing  at  less  than  half  that 
price.  The  pessimism  of  investors  is  matched  by 
the  hostility  of  Central  Americans  to  North 
American  industry  in  general. 

The  Diplomats 

If  anything,  our  diplomats  do  worse.  Our 
Embassy  in  Tegucigalpa  occupies  a  huge,  luxuri- 
ous, high-walled  modern  fortress.  In  sharp  con- 
trast to  most  of  the  other  embassies  of  the  old 
capital,  it  reeks  of  money  and  power. 

One  former  Ambassador  made  a  policy  of  ac- 
companying President  Ramon  Villeda  Morales 
on  his  frequent  trips  aroimd  the  country,  ap- 
parently intending  to  create  an  image  of  Ameri- 
can-Honduran  solidarity.  Instead,  sensitive  local 
people  predictably  interpreted  this  as  U.  S. 
domination  over  their  government.  As  one  Hon- 
duran  put  it,  "Uncle  Sam  gives  us  money  with 
no  strings  attached— then  he  attaches  'the  tick' 
to  the  President's  back  to  see  that  we  spend  it 
right!" 

Recently,  a  Tegucigalpa  university  student 
told  me  that  he  and  his  fellow  students  are  "tired 
of  having  every  government  decision  checked 
with  your  Embassy."  Whether  this  actually  hap- 
pens or  not  is  unimportant— the  significant  thing 
is  that  the  students  tliink  it  happens,  and  resent 
it.  Remember  that  in  Latin  America,  the  stu- 
dents are  both  active  and  potent  politically— 
their  weight  has  often  swung  revolutions  one 
way  or  another.  (In  1959,  for  example,  Colonel 
Armando  Velascjuez  Cerrato  led  a  rebellion 
against  the  Honduran  government.  The  police 
defected  to  him;  the  army  wavered;  the  revolu- 
tion failed  when  the  students  took  up  arms  in 
sujjport  of  the  government.) 


BY     D.     H.     RADLER 


67 


No  U.  S.  group  in  Honduras  addresses  itself 
to  student  opinion.  The  Communists  do— all  the 
time.  Is  it  any  wonder  that  the  students  are  in- 
fluenced by  them? 

"We  have  few  real  Communists  in  our  group," 
a  student  friend  told  me,  "but  annoyance  with 
American  meddling  and  patronizing  Americar, 
attitudes  causes  many  of  us  to  accept  the  Com- 
munist vocabulary:  Yankee  Imperialism,  Dollar 
Diplomacy,  and  the  rest.  And  remember— we  are 
the  real  future  leaders  here.  Anyone  with  a  uni- 
versity education  is  still  so  rare  that  he  is  auto- 
matically on  top  of  the  heap  in  the  professions, 
in  business,  or  in  politics." 

Our  consulate  in  San  Pedro  Sula,  second  city 
and  economic  capital  of  the  country,  is  also  big 
and  expensive  by  local  standards.  Awaiting  re- 
tirement, the  consul  is  fairly  inactive,  but  several 
vice-consuls  have  left  their  mark  on  the  com- 
munity. There  was  one,  for  example  who 

(1)  replaced  without  notice  the  pojjular  di- 
rector of  the  U.  S.  cultinal  center  because  she 
was  a  German,  not  an  American,  causing  vigorous 
student  protest; 

(2)  demanded  that  students  at  the  center, 
for  course  credit,  must  listen  to  the  Voice  of 
America; 

(3)  established  a  conversational  English  course 
based  on  readings  from  Time  (whose  negative 
attitude  toward  Latin  America  we  will  examine 
shortly); 

(4)  called  a  popular  local  businessman  "a  dog- 
thief  and  an  ex-Nazi"  when  a  watchdog  lent  him 
by  this  man  doggishly  ran  home; 

(5)  earned  the  local  name  of  "The  Ugly  Ameri- 
can"—and  a  promotion  to  a  major  European 
capital  as  senior  information  officer. 

It  would  appear  that  a  great  many  of  our 
diplomats  here  are  neither  selected  for  nor 
trained  in  diplomacy— or  in  the  language  and 
customs— or  in  an  acceptable  attitude  toward  the 
people  whose  friendship  they  are  supposed  to 
win.  The  rare  effective  U.  S.  spokesman— such 
as  a  political  officer  I  met  in  Mexico  City  who 
had  married  a  Latin,  brought  his  children  up  to 
be  bilingual,  and  settled  into  the  life  of  the 
country— is  shortly  transferred  elsewhere  on  the 
State  Department's  rigid  rotation  schedule. 

The  Russians,  who  lack  official  representation 
here,  have  been  represented  by  Cuban  emissaries 
—tall,  handsome,  bearded,  and  uniformed  Latins 
who  are  obviously  "brothers"  of  the  Hondurans 
and  whose  friendship  missions  take  them  into 
the  cantinas  and  football  stadia  of  the  people 
rather  than  the  loftier  confines  of  diplomatic 
circles.    This  approach  is  reflected   in   the  very 


language  of  the  Russians  as  compared  with  ours: 
e.g.,  in  an  early  exchange  over  Cuba,  Khrushchev 
said,  "We  will  help  our  Cuban  brothers  .  .  . '; 
Eisenhower  declared,  "The  U.  S.  will  not  per- 
mit .  .  ." 


The  Voice  of  Time,  Inc. 

If  American  business  and  government  are  fail- 
ing to  make  friends  for  us  in  Latin  America, 
their  impact  is  no  greater  than  that  of  Time 
magazine,  which,  on  the  record,  has  made  us  a 
host  of  enemies.  One  high-ranking  Honduran 
government  official  told  me  that  America  would 
be  much  better  liked  "if  Time  printed  no  Latin 
American  edition  at  all." 

It's  easy  to  see  why.  Here  in  Honduras,  after 
a  stormy  history  of  dictatorship,  revolution,  and 
more  dictatorship,  the  people  finally  have  a 
freely  elected,  genuinely  democratic  government. 
President  Ramon  Villeda  Morales,  a  leading 
physician  and  ardent  humanist,  took  office  in 
December  1957.  Consider  Time's  coverage  of  the 
events  leading  up  to  the  election,  beginning  with 
its  issue  of  September  23,  1957: 

"Three  years  ago  Honduras'  Liberal  Party  Chief 
Dr.  Ramon  Villeda  Morales,  48,  nicknamed  'Little 
Bird,'  had  a  badly  busted  wing.  .  .  .  Last  week  he  was 
riding  high.  .  .  . 

'Tor  the  last  eight  months  Villeda  has  been  serving 
as  Honduras'  Ambassador  to  Washington.  The  stay  in 
the  U.  S.  apparently  had  done  him  good  [italics 
mine].  Washington  received  him  warily,  largely  be- 
cause of  his  leftist  campaign  oratory  in  '54,  e.g., 
promising  campesinos  an  eight-hour  day  at  double 
and  triple  pay." 

U.  S.  workers  have  long  had  an  eight-hour  day 
—and  triple  the  1954  Honduran  average  is  still 
only  $1.50  a  day,  which  many  Hondurans  are 
now  getting,  thanks  to  Villeda's  having  fulfilled 
the  promise  Time  called  "leftist."  The  article 
concluded:  "But  Villeda  Morales  proved  himself 
a  much  sobered  man."  The  implication  that  the 
Honduran  presidential  candidate  was  a  wild- 
eyed  left-winger,  but  saw  the  light  after  eight 
months  in  Washington,  is  not  a  pretty  compli- 
ment to  a  probable  chief  of  state. 

Then,  on  October  7,  1957,  Time  reported: 

"Villeda  had  won  the  [Honduran  presidential]  elec- 
tion in  1954  on  a  wild-eyed  program  promising  double 
and  triple  wages  to  farmhands.  .  .  .  But  eight  months 
in  Washington  .  .  .  had  a  steadying  effect.  .  .  .  He  an- 
nounced that  he  was  categorically  opposed  to  Com- 
munism." 

Here  we  go  one  step  further,  to  the  clear  im- 
plications that  Villeda  had  been  pro-Conimunist 
(there  is  no  record  that  he  ever  was);  and  that 


68 


OUR     TALENT     FOR     OFFENDING      PEOPLE 


his   stay   in   Washington   had   set    him   straight. 

Time  continued:  "The  Assembly  .  .  .  can  either 
name  Villeda  President  or  schedule  elections, 
which  he  claims  to  prefer.  .  .  ."  Why  "claims"? 
This  implies  that  Villeda  is  no  democrat,  really 
wants  the  presidency  any  way  he  can  get  it.  But 
in  Honduras  in  1957,  Villeda  could  have  won 
any  election— why  not  prefer  it? 

Despite  Time,  Villeda  became  president.  He 
went  to  work  on  health,  welfare,  education,  and 
transportation  for  his  country's  nearly  two  mil- 
lion people.  He  built  schools,  health  centers, 
roads,  and  bridges,  gave  workers  a  realistic  labor 
code.  Time  reported  not  a  word  of  this.  Then 
Villeda  announced  plans  for  a  hydroelectric 
plant  on  the  turbulent  Rio  Lindo.  Time  de- 
clared, October  20,  1958: 

"The  [World]  Bank  argued  that  roads  are  more 
important  than  a  big  dose  of  power  for  a  primitive 
country,  gave  Honduras  a  $5,000,000  highway  loan, 
hoping  to  encourage  a  big  road-building  program. 
The  effect  was  just  the  opposite." 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  in  that  first  year  in  office, 
Villeda  biult  or  started  building  more  miles  of 
road  than  Honduras  had  previously  had  in  its 
entire  139-year  history.  He  is  now  building  the 
Rio  Lindo  hydroelectric  plant  as  well,  with 
$16  million  loaned  by  the  Export-Import  Bank 
and  other  banks  which  agree  that  power  is  es- 
sential  to  Honduras'   further  development. 

On  January  1 1  of  last  year,  Time  continued  its 
curious  brand  of  "reporting"  from  Honduras. 
Under  the  heading  of  "Letdown,"  its  story  began 
with  a  pat  on  the  back  for  President  Morales, 
saying  that  two  years  after  he  took  office,  "Hon- 
duras is  free  and  politically  stable— no  small 
merit  in  a  country  whose  history  counts  135 
revolutions."  But  Time  swung  immediately  into: 
"Nonetheless,  Honduras  is  a  troubled  land,  suf- 
fering, as  Tegucigalpa's  El  Cronista  put  it  last 
week,  with  'spiritual  helplessness  and  a  chronic 
economic  depression'."  And,  it  added,  "Com- 
munists are  beginning  to  elbow  their  way  into 
the  nation's  press."  Time  failed  to  note  that  El 
Cronista,  the  authority  it  quoted  a  few  lines 
earlier,  is  the  principal  Communist-dominated 
newspaper  in  the  country.  It  has  been  frantically 
and  unpopularly  supporting— and  receiving  sub- 
stantial financial  aid  from— Fidel  Castro's  Cuban 
revolutionary  government.  Concluding  tlie  same 
story.  Time  declared:  "The  longer  he  flutters, 
the  less  Little  Bird  looks  like  the  stormy  petrel 
he  seemed  before  taking  office." 

But  Villeda,  in  addition  to  his  ckai  record  of 
social  ac(()mjjlishnicnt,  has  meanwhile  siucess- 
fully  handled  a  half-do/cn  armed  rebellions  from 


the  extreme  right;  replaced  an  entire  recalcitrant 
national  police  force  with  a  loyal  civil  guard; 
effectively  countered  constant  Communist  agita- 
tion throughout  the  country— without  declaring 
a  "state  of  siege"  such  as  neighboring  Guatemala, 
Nicaragua,  and  El  Salvador  have  found  neces- 
sary. Furthermore,  he  has  avoided  major  strikes 
in  the  ailing  banana  industry,  the  mainstay  of 
the  nation's  economy,  and  he  has  attracted  sub- 
stantial capital  investment  from  abroad  in  a 
period  when  such  investment  has  been  on  the 
decline  throughout  most  of  Latin  America  be- 
cause of  political  instability. 

Were  Time's  needless  flippancy  aimed  only  at 
Villeda,  one  might  see  it  as  an  isolated  prejudice 
but  the  magazine— which  is  read  throughout 
Latin  America  as  the  voice  of  the  U.  S.— main- 
tains the  same  smug,  belittling  attitude  toward 
virtually  everything  Latin  American,  except,  per- 
haps, its  dictators.    Items: 

BRAZIL  (January  16,  1956):  ".  .  .  Foregoing  his 
gimpy  English,  the  President-elect  talked  to  Ike  in 
Portuguese,  translated  by  .  .  ."  [For  that  matter,  ivhat 
of  Ike's  non-existent  Portuguese?] 

COSTA  RICA  (June  23,  1958):  Ex-President  Jose 
Figueres,  one  of  Latin  America's  most  respected 
democrats  and  a  firm  friend  of  the  U.  S.,  ivas  asked 
to  tell  our  House  of  Representatives  u'hy  the  U.  S.  is 
disliked  south  of  the  border.  He  did.  Time  reported: 
".  .  .  outspoken  Pepe  so  exaggerated  and  overstated 
his  case  that  great  pieces  of  his  statement  ended 
up  sounding  sadly  like  the  Yanqui-haitin^  he  de- 
plores. .  .  ."  Don  Pepe  is  and  was  outspoke?}— that's 
why  he  was  asked  to  give  the  talk  in  the  first  place- 
but  there  n'as  little  in  his  statement  that  is  exag- 
gerated or  overstated,  unless  any  criticism  of  the 
U.  S.,  even  by  inxntation,  must  necessarily  be  so 
characterized. 

VENEZUELA  (July  21,  1958):  Time's  f^rst  reference 
to  Presidential  Candidate  Romulo  Betancourt,  an- 
other leading  liberal  ivith  pro-U .  S.  leanings:  "Key  to 
the  political  puzzle  was  beefy  Romulo  Betancourt, 
50,  top  man  of  the  leftist  Democratic  Action.  .  .  . 
Betancourt  now  takes  a  carefully  statesmanlike  line." 

BOLIVIA  (March  2,  1959):  "Last  week  a  U.  S.  Em- 
bassy official  added  up  the  results  [of  U.  S.  aid  to 
Bolivia]  and  made  a  wry  face.  'We  don't  have  a  damn 
thing  to  show  for  it,'  he  said.  'We're  wasting  money. 
The  only  solution  to  Bolivia's  problems,'  he  went  on 
to  wisecrack,  'is  to  abolish  Bolivia.  Let  her  neighbors 
divide  up  the  country  and  the  problems'." 

Time's  story  not  only  enraged  Bolivians  but 
set  off  anti-American  riots  in  which  several  peo- 
ple were  hurt,  significant  property  damage  was 
done,  and  U.  S.  prestige  was  badly  deflated.  On 
March  16,  calling  the  story  "The  Fanned  Spark," 
Time  rejiorted:  "This  ruefid  jest,  rej^eated  by  a 
U.  S.  official  in  La  Pa/  and  (juoted  in  Time's 
Maich   2   issue,   was   turned    last   week   into   the 


BY     D.     H.     RADLER 


69 


spark  for  three  clays  of  anti-U.  S.  violence.  .  .  . 
The  U.  S.  position  [was]  that  there  was  'no  evi- 
dence' that  the  statement  was  ever  made.  .  .  ." 

These  examples  could  easily  be  multiplied. 
Surveying  the  Latin  American  edition  of  Time 
over  the  past  four  years,  one  finds  a  consistent 
tone  of  smug  superiority,  a  persistent  flow  of 
ridicule  for  virtually  everything  Latin  American. 
Of  course,  there  are  occasional  favorable  stories 
in  Time.  Its  longer  "cover  stories"  on  Latin 
America— for  example,  the  one  on  Betancourt  of 
Venezuela  in  February  1960— sometimes  show 
signs  of  more  responsible  editing  and  writing 
than  do  its  week-to-week  reports.  But  Time's 
favors  are  rarely  bestowed  on  any  performance 
south  of  the  border  that  doesn't  neatly  mirror 
dime's  version  of  life  in  the  U.  S. 

Even  then  the  Time  style  intrudes.  For  in- 
stance, in  a  story  commending  Brazil,  Time 
couldn't  resist  discussion  of  the  country's 
"Johnny-come-lately  industries."  In  general, 
towns  smaller  than  Rio  de  Janeiro  or  Buenos 
Aires  are  described  as  "sleepy";  nations  less  de- 
veloped industrially  than  Mexico  or  Colombia 
as  "backward"  or  "primitive";  plans  for  local 
development  as  "starry-eyed";  appeals  to  the 
U.  S.  as  "dollar-hungry";  dealings  with  govern- 
ments Time  does  not  approve  of  as  "Red-lining." 

So  much  for  our  major  press  representation  in 
Latin  America.  Along  with  the  often  greedy, 
thoughtless  behavior  of  American  business  here 
and  the  weirdly  "Ugly  American"  performances 
of  so  many  of  our  government  people,  Time 
must  bear  responsibility  for  jeopardizing  our 
relations  with  Latin  America. 

Guilty  Gringos 

Meanwhile,  the  average  Americans  who  come 
here  make  matters  worse.  In  general,  they  are 
badly  informed  before  they  come  and  they  make 
a  bad  impression  when  they  arrive.  Then,  while 
they  are  here,  they  send  more  misinformation 
back  home.  Talking  in  New  York  recently  with 
a  director  of  a  large,  world-wide  U.  S.  corpora- 
tion, I  was  shocked  to  hear  that  his  men  had  re- 
ported that  anti-Yankee  feeling  is  dead  in  Latin 
America,  except  for  Cuba.  "We  don't  have  a 
thing  to  worry  about,"  he  smilingly  told  me.  But 
his  men,  dressed  in  business  suits,  arriving  by 
plane  and  traveling  by  car  in  the  big  cities,  see 
only  the  glitter— and  talk  only  with  their  Latin 
American  counterparts.  Educated,  traveled,  and 
wealthy,  these  Latins  know  what  side  their  im- 
ported melba  toast  is  buttered  on.  If  they  know 
of  anti-gringo  sentiments,  they're  altogether  too 
smart  to  talk  about  it. 


But  on  the  walls  of  the  millions  of  thatch- 
roofed  shacks  of  the  peasants,  Fidel's  picture 
hangs  alongside  that  of  Christ  and  the  Virgin, 
replacing  such  former  local  heroes  as  Francisco 
Morazan,  martyr  to  Central  American  unity.  (In 
San  Pedro,  Morazan's  statue  recently  sported  the 
red-paint  legend,  "Viva  Castro!  Yanquis  go 
home!")  And  in  the  field  commissaries  of  the 
banana  companies  and  in  the  candlelit  cantinas 
of  the  poor,  a  word  against  Castro  is  still  tanta- 
mount to  suicide.  (I  know  this  because  I've  been 
there.  Unfortunately,  most  of  our  pulse-takers 
haven't.) 

There  are  obvious  historical,  political,  and 
economic  reasons  for  anti-gringo  feelings,  chief 
among  them  the  size,  wealth,  and  good  fortune 
of  the  United  States.  But  the  hostility  toward  us 
could  be  diminished  if  the  Americans  who  come 
here  were  the  sort  of  people  Latins  could  like 
and  respect.  With  few  exceptions,  they  usually 
manage  to  make  enemies  instead  of  friends. 

We  do  this  by  acting  as  if  we  are  better  than 
anyone  else.  We  know  little  of  Latin  American 
history,  geography,  politics,  or  economics,  ap- 
parently because  we  don't  think  it's  worth  learn- 
ing; we  speak  Spanish  poorly  or  not  at  all  be- 
cause "they'll  understand  English  if  I  holler 
loud  enough."  We  describe  ourselves  as  demo- 
cratic and  ask  Latin  Americans  to  emulate  us— 
yet  Americans  here  usually  stick  to  the  big  cities 
and  ride  the  best  and  most  private  transporta- 
tion. If  they  enter  a  Latin  home,  it  is  a  high-class 
home,  comfortably  reminiscent  of  upper-middle- 
class  homes  in  the  States.  We  seem  unable  to 
tolerate  the  natural  smell  of  a  man  who  never 
heard  of  deodorants. 

During  and  after  World  War  II,  the  British 
criticized  us  for  brashness,  forwardness,  loudness. 
But  today  in  Latin  America  we  make  enemies  by 
seeming  to  be  too  reserved,  too  preciously  with- 
drawn. An  ex-European,  now  a  Honduran 
citizen,  told  me:  "You  Americans  have  had  it  too 
good.  You're  starting  to  act  like  the  Germans 
before  they  set  out  to  take  over  the  world.  You 
really  believe  you're  better  than  anyone  else. 
But  the  day  of  the  superman  is  over— that's  why 
nobody  likes  you." 

But  I  don't  think  most  Americans  down  here 
are  irrevocably  arrogant,  even  if  they  appear  to 
be.  I  think  they're  afraid.  They  seem  to  be 
frightened  and  embarrassed  by  people  Avho  use 
warm  abrazos  in  place  of  cold  handshakes,  who 
express  their  emotions  frankly  instead  of  ration- 
alizing around  every  bush.  Weaned  on  canned 
"self-help"  and  "popularity"  formulas,  and 
babied  along  on  condensed,  homogenized  food. 


70 


OUR     TALENT     FOR     OFFENDING     PEOPLE 


clothing,  and  culture,  they  are  repelled  and  even 
terrified  by  people  who  eat  food  as  it  comes  from 
the  ground,  wipe  their  fingers  on  their  rough 
denim  pants,  and  make  music  and  poetry  with 
their  own  mouths  and  hands  instead  of  by  proxy. 

I  know  a  big,  strapping  American  woman  who 
has  lived  peaceably  in  the  tropics  for  three  or 
four  years  who— in  broad  daylight— left  a  friend's 
house  by  the  back  door  to  avoid  passing  four  or 
five  Latin  workers,  employees  of  the  same  com- 
pany as  her  husband.  She  was  afraid  even  to 
walk  past  them  (although,  husky  as  she  is,  she 
might  well  have  whipped  the  whole  crowd  had 
the  need  arisen).  I  know  another  woman  who  has 
always  df)ne  her  own  cooking  "because  if  that  In- 
dian got  mad  at  mc  some  day,  she  might  poison 
the  food." 

I  know  several  American  managers,  foremen, 
etc.,  who  refuse  to  discipline  their  crews  or  ex- 
press disapproval  of  poor  work  "because  I  don't 
want  to  wind  up  with  a  machete  in  my  back." 
This,  despite  the  countless  managers  and  fore- 
men who  have  got  on  with  the  job  for  years  with- 
out becoming  emergency  clinic  statistics.  Anyone 
who  has  lived  here  and  used  his  eyes  could  cite 
dozens  of  similar  cases  of  imagined  fears. 

It  sometimes  seems  to  me  that  fear,  not  ar- 
rogance, is  what  makes  some  American  companies 
abroad  exclude  local  people  from  stock  owner- 
ship or  executive  resjjonsibility.  And  perhaps  it 
is  a  kind  of  fear  that  causes  our  diplomats  to  be 
woefully  imdiplomatic,  and  publications  such  as 
Time  to  adopt  an  attitude  of  smugness  about 
everything  American  (the  known)  and  of  flip- 
pancy toward  everything  Latin  (the  unknown). 

Discomfort  and  Democracy 

In  the  first  half  of  this  century,  we  were 
supremely  unafraid— in  Latin  America,  the  dic- 
tators owned  the  people,  and,  as  often  as  not,  we 
owned  the  dictators.  (For  example,  the  old 
Cuyamel  Fruit  Company,  which  later  merged 
with  United  Fruit,  openly  supported  the  Bonilla 
coup  in  Honduras,  and  received  notoriously 
preferential  treatment  in  return.) 

Today,  Latin  America  has  only  three  dictators 
—after  centuries  of  oppression,  the  people  have, 
in  the  last  dozen  years,  effected  a  series  of  social 
and  political  revolutions  in  this  half  of  the 
hemisphere.  In  1948,  Costa  Rica  put  down  a 
would-be  dictator,  Calderon  Guardia;  in  1952, 
Bolivia  overthrew  its  ancient  oligarchy;  Argen- 
tina rid  itself  of  Juan  Pcron  in  1955;  in  1956, 
Peruvian  Dictator  Manuel  Odria  quit;  Hon- 
duras installed  Villeda  Morales  in  1957;  in  1958, 
Colombia  replaced  Dictator  Rojas  Pinilla  with 


Alberto  Lleras  Camargo,  one  of  the  world's  most 
distinguished  and  effective  democrats;  that  same 
year,  Venezuelan  Dictator  Perez  Jimenez  fled,  was 
replaced  by  freely-elected  Romulo  Betancourt; 
in  1959,  Castro  swept  Batista  out  of  Cuba;  hav- 
ing betrayed  the  revolution,  he  may  soon  suffer 
the  same  fate  himself. 

Sadly  enough  Americans  often  seem  less  com- 
fortable in  the  new  rather  rough-and-ready 
atmosphere  of  emerging  democracy  than  they 
were  before  Latin  Americans  began  gaining  con- 
trol of  their  own  destinies.  A  fruit  company 
executive  who  travels  constantly  told  me  that  he 
likes  the  Dominican  Republic  best  of  all:  "The 
people  there  don't  dare  steal  anything  from  an 
American  or  give  him  a  hard  time  or  they'll  end 
up  in  jail  for  life.  It  may  be  tough  on  them  but 
it's  sure  good  for  us!"  Our  Ambassadors  still 
seem  to  get  on  famously  with  such  people  as 
Nicaraguan  Dictatou  Luis  Somoza,  son  of  the  in- 
famous, assassinated  "Tacho." 

Of  course  Americans  back  home  approve  in 
principle  when  brutal  dictators  are  overthrown; 
but  those  on  the  spot  too  often  find  their  neat 
and  privileged  world  shattered— and  they  are  un- 
willing or  unable  to  come  to  terms  with  the 
more  demanding  one  that  replaces  it. 

Certainly  it  would  be  naive  to  argue  that  all 
the  problems  of  the  United  States  in  Latin 
America  spring  from  defective  personal  relations. 
No  matter  how  sympathetic  or  concerned  Ameri- 
cans in  Latin  America  may  be,  our  relations  will 
still  founder  if  obtuse  and  greedy  policies  are 
pursued  by  our  government  and  our  corpora- 
tions. But  until  the  Americans  now  in  Latin 
America  overcome  their  provincial  fear  of  the 
new  and  different,  they  will  seem  arrogant— and 
they  will  be  fondly  hated.  And  even  the  most 
enlightened  policies  designed  in  Washington  or 
New  York  will  be  undermined. 

Hypocritical  calculations  by  Madison  Avenue 
public  relations  experts  won't  work.  Nor  will 
the  patent  absurdity  of  "going  native."  Instead 
we  must  look  upon  our  Latin  American  neigh- 
bors simply  as  people  like  ourselves— less  for- 
tunate geographically  and  historically  perhaps, 
and  for  the  moment  in  need  of  our  financial  and 
technical  aid.  But  they  are  becoming  equal  part- 
ners in  the  Western  Hemisphere,  and  they  de- 
mand to  be  treated  as  such. 

Have  we  become  so  affluent  and  pampered  a 
people,  so  lacking  in  adventure  and  warmth,  that 
we  will  be  unable  to  meet  this  direct  human 
challenge?  I  do  not  think  so,  but  if  we  are  to 
succeed  in  Latin  America,  we  must  shuck  off  the 
habits  of  the  past;  and  we  must  do  it  soon. 

Harper's  Magazine,  August  1961 


JOHN    D.   ROSENBERG 


A  Matter  of 
Motive 


The  events  here  recounted — although  perhaps 

not  typical — occurred  precisely  as  they 

are  described;  only  the  names  of  the 

Treasury  Department  agents  are  fictitious. 

IA  S  T  spring  I  was  summoned  to  the  Treas- 
^ury  Department  Building  on  West  Hous- 
ton Street  in  lower  Manhattan.  Three  years 
earlier  I  had  read  a  Neiu  York  Times  article 
headed: 

TEACHERS  WIN  FIGHT 

U.  S.  Permits  Cost  Deduction 
On  Courses  Since   1954 

Promotion  No  Factor 

The  Times  was  wrong.  Our  fight,  to  judge  from 
my  own  bizarre  experience,  has  scarcely  begun. 

After  reading  the  article,  I  decided  to  file 
claims  for  my  educational  expenses  since  1954. 
A  colleague  suggested  that  since  I  am  also  a 
literary  critic,  I  ought  as  well  to  deduct  for  that 
corner  of  my  apartment  I  use  when  writing.  The 
government,  I  calculated,  owed  me  $517.04  for 
overpayment  of  taxes. 

For  nearly  three  years  the  claims  were  shuffled 
back  and  forth  among   the   various   New   York 


offices  of  the  Internal  Revenue  Service  until,  at 
last,  I  was  directed  to  appear  before  Mr.  Santini, 
Assistant  Adjuster  for  Educational  Claims. 

"You  know,  Mr.  Rosenberg,"  he  announced  as 
I  seated  myself  opposite  him,  "we've  had  to  dis- 
allow 90  per  cent  of  all  educational  claims.  Es- 
pecially those  of  teachers.  I  suppose  you  took 
the  courses  because  you  need  a  Ph.D.  And  you 
need  a  Ph.D.  to  get  tenure?" 

"Exactly." 

"I'm  afraid  that's  why  we  can't  allow  it,"  he 
said  with  pained  solicitude.  "You  see,  if  you 
don't  have  tenure,  we  must  consider  you  a 
temporary  employee  taking  courses  in  order  to 
get  a  job  you  don't  yet  have.  And  expenses  in- 
curred in  order  to  obtain  a  new  position  are  not 
allowable." 

"But  I've  already  got  the  job.  I've  had  it  for 
years.  Some  of  my  colleagues  have  withered  and 
died  in  the  same  'temporary'  status.  What  you're 
saying  is  that  if  I  had  the  degree,  the  govern- 
ment would  allow  me  to  deduct  for  courses  I 
would  have  no  reason  to  take;  but  since  I  took 
them  because  I  needed  them,  they  are  disal- 
lowed." 

"You  might  put  it  that  way,  if  you  like." 

"Now  suppose,"  I  continued,  "we  forget  the 
degree  altogether.  I  have  a  statement  from 
the  chairman  of  my  department  certifying  that 
if  I  had  not  taken  those  courses,  I  would  long 
ago  have  lost  my  job." 

"I'm  afraid  it  sounds  odd,  Mr.  Rosenberg,  but 
you  can't  claim  that,  for  in  the  eyes  of  this 
Department  you  are  not  yet  employed." 

After  a  stunned  moment  I  confessed  it  was 
rather  paradoxical,  and  then  recalled  the  ex- 
actly analogous  case  of  a  colleague.  "Perhaps 
you  maintain  that  Marlor  wasn't  employed 
either— you  disallowed  his  claim.  He  appealed 
to  the  Tax  Court  and  lost  there,  too.  But  the 
U.  S.  Court  of  Appeals  reversed  the  decision  and 
upheld  him." 

"You're  right,  the  decision  went  against  us. 
But  the  Treasury  Department  does  not  acquiesce 
in  the  case  of  Marlor." 

"I  beg  your  pardon?" 

"The  Treasury  Department  refuses  to  ac- 
quiesce." 

"One  doesn't  choose  to  acquiesce,  or  disdain 
from  acquiescing,  in  a  court  decision.  One  com- 
plies." 

"The  Treasury  Department  refuses  .  .  ." 

"Then,  Mr.  Santini,  the  Treasury  Department 
sets  itself  above  the  law.  You  are  tyrannizing 
over  the  taxpayer,  subverting  the  judicial  process, 
inviting  anarchy." 


72 


A     MATTER     OF     MOTIVE 


"The  Treasury  Department  .  .  ." 

"Look,"  I  interrupted,  trying  to  avoid  a  com- 
plete impasse,  "why  don't  you  go  over  the  rest  of 
my  claim  and  see  if  we  can  still  come  to  a  settle- 
ment?" 

He  agreed;  and  to  assure^ me  of  his  fairness, 
summoned  his  colleague  Mr.  Vine,  a  soft-spoken, 
soft-shoed  agent  of  about  forty.  Together  they 
scrutinized  the  only  other  item  of  moment:  the 
rent  deduction  which  I  had  claimed  as  a  writer. 

"I  see  that  you  have  not  declared  your  income 
from  writing,"  Mr.  Vine  noted  in  a  grave 
whisper. 

"I  have  none." 

"You  mean  all  your  stories  are  rejected?" 

"No— my  essays  have  been  published,  but  I  do 
not  get  paid." 

"Surely  you  don't  expect  the  Treasury  Depart- 
ment," he  asked  shaking  his  head,  "to  grant  a 
deduction  when  there's  no  income  from  which 
to  deduct?" 

I  slumped  in  my  chair.  Mr.  Saniini  turi.od  to 
Mr.  Vine;  Mr.  Vine,  standing  directly  in  front 
of  mc,  said  softly,  "A  weak  case  ...  a  iiery  weak 
case."  I  felt  that  Mr.  Vine  was  passing  judgment 
not  merely  upon  my  claim  but  upon  my  person. 
He  returned  to  his  desk  across  the  aisle.  My  spirit 
was  desolate,  my  hopes  drained  dry. 

MR  .  S  A  N  T  I  N  I  figured  the  claims  with- 
out my  deductions  as  writer  or  teacher. 
I  owed  the  government  $137.13.  I  glanced  des- 
perately around  the  office.  The  other  claimants 
had  long  since  departed,  and  a  small  cluster  of 
agents  were  chatting  away  the  remaining  minutes 
until  five  o'clock.  One  agent— portly,  balding, 
but  youngish— walked  over  to  the  desk.  Mr. 
Santini  introduced  us  and  I  felt  at  once  in  the 
presence  of  a  superior  spirit  who  looked  upon 
the  petty  goings-on  in  that  vast  room  as  a  kind 
of  legalistic  gymnastic,  a  game  dedicated  to  the 
agile  exercise  of  statutes  and  precedents.  He  had 
been  studying  tax  law  at  New  York  University 
for  nine  years  and  assured  me  that  my  ordeal 
paled  before  those  he  had  been  through  or  was 
about  to  face. 

"In  fact,  Mr.  Rosenberg,"  he  said,  "I  myself, 
Treasury  Agent  Bronstein,  just  disallowed  my 
own  claim  as  Taxpayer  Bronstein.  And  do  you 
know  what  I'm  doing?  I'm  fighting  it  in  Tax 
Court.  Bronstein  vs.  The  Treasury  Department 
comes  up  in  two  months.  That's  how  fair  we 
are.  We've  got  to  see  it  from  the  other  fellow's 
point  of  view,  from  your  point  of  view,  Mr. 
Rosenberg.  And  to  show  you  how  just  we  are, 
I'm  getting   time  off   from   this   Department   in 


order  to  fight  this  Department.    Do  you  know  of 
anything  like  it?" 

I  confessed  that  I  didn't,  indeed,  that  my  a^ve 
waxed  as  my  hopes  waned.  Appealing  both  to 
his  sense  of  justice  and  to  the  Talmudic  logi- 
calities of  his  mind,  I  explained,  "Had  you  al- 
lowed my  tuition  and  disallowed  my  rent,  I 
would  have  signed;  had  you  allowed  my  rent  and 
not  my  tuition,  I  would  .  .  ." 

"Ah!"  he  interrupted  with  a  palms-up  shrug 
in  his  voice,  "had  He  fed  us  on  manna,  and  not 
given  us  the  Sabbath,  it  would  suffice  us.  Had 
He  given  us  the  Sabbath,  and  not  brought  us 
near  Him  at  Sinai,  it  would  suffice  us.  Had  He 
brought  us  .  .  ." 

"Precisely!  The  Lord  granted  all  to  His 
Chosen  People,  and  you  allow  nothing." 

He  seemed  touched  by  the  disparity  and,  in  a 
conciliatory  gesture,  picked  up  the  topmost  of 
the  periodicals  on  Mr.  Santini's  desk.  "What 
does  'Jay  Ee  Gee  Pee'  mean?" 

"It's  an  abbreviation  for  Journal  of  English 
and  Germanic  Philology,  a  scholarly  periodical 
of  modest  circulation." 

"You  write   it?" 

"One  of  the  articles  is  mine." 

Helpfully  but  mistakenly,  Mr.  Santini  pointed 
to  "Zur  Textgestaltung  des  West-ostlichen 
Divans:  Orthographic  imd  Interpunktion."  Mr. 
Bronstein  thumbed  incredulously  through  an- 
other entitled  "The  Structure  of  Eyrbyggja 
Saga,"  and  I  sat  back  thinking  it  didn't  much 
matter  anyway.  Then  he  began  to  recite,  as  if 
in  some  bizarre  foreign  tongue,  "  'Thus  Auden, 
who  conceives  of  Tennyson  as  a  kind  of  disem- 
bodied ear,  mindless  and  melancholy  .  .  .'  "  I 
was  pleased  that  he  had  at  last  found  my  article. 

"Why  do  you  write  these  things?" 

"Because  I  am  a  literary  critic  and  this  is  what 
literary  critics  write." 

"Is  it  a  business,  trade,  or  profession?" 

"Well,  it's  certainly  not  a  business.  And  the 
exchange  value  of  six  complimentary  copies 
hardly  makes  it  a  trade.  Call  it  a  profession;  in 
my  case  a  nonremunerative  one,  a  charity  you 
might  sav." 

"No  good.    If  it's  a  charity,  you've  got  to  be 


John  D.  Rosenberg  recently  received  his  doc- 
torate from  Columbia  and  he  also  holds  degrees 
from  Cambridge  University.  He  is  an  English  in- 
structor at  the  City  College  of  New  York  and  lias 
published  critical  articles  in  a  number  of  literary 
journals.  His  boofc  on  RusJcin — "The  Darkening 
Glass" — won  the  Ansley  Award  and  will  appear  this 
fall. 


BY     JOHN      D.     ROSENBERG 


73 


certified  and  incorporated.  You  see,  it's  all  a 
cjuestion  of  motive.  Say  a  man's  out  to  make  a 
profit— even  if  he  doesn't,  that's  still  his  motive, 
and  we  let  him  deduct  expenses  incurred  while 
trying  to  make  the  money  he  didn't  make.  That's 
fine.  Now  have  any  of  these  things  ever  earned 
you  anything,  or  did  you  ever  write  them  think- 
ing they  miglit,  even  pennies?" 

It  dawned  on  me  that  perhaj)s  Mr.  Bronstein 
had  taken  it  upon  himself  to  act  as  my  advocate, 
as  he  was  about  to  do  for  himself  in  Bronstein 
vs.  The  Treasury  Deportment.  Still,  in  deference 
to  his  own  disinterestedness,  I  refused  to  lie: 
"No,  the  profit  motive  doesn't  fit.  It  is  the  nature 
of  such  journals  to  lack  funds,  as  it  is  the  nature 
of  their  contributors  not  to  seek  them.  But  sup- 
pose my  motive  was  recognition,  status,  getting 
ahead  in  my  profession.  We  have  a  slogan  where 
I  work— publish  or  perish.  Why  not  call  it  an 
obligatory  expense,  necessary  to  my  professional 
survival?" 

I  believed  I  had  at  last  scored  a  point,  but  Mr. 
Bronstein  looked  glumly  at  Mr.  Santini  and 
spoke  for  them  both:  "You  don't  get  tenure  till 
you  have  your  Ph.D.?" 

I  recognized  the  old  sophistry  and  tried  to 
squelch  it  at  once:  "True,  but  totally  irrelevant." 

"True,  but  terribly  relevant,  Mr.  Rosenberg. 
As  a  temporary  employee,  you  can't  claim  that 
you  write  in  order  to  hold  a  job  you  haven't  yet 
secured.  And  if  the  motive  is  tenure,  then  you 
are  seeking  a  new  position  and  that,  you  know, 
the  government  doesn't  allow." 

".\11  right,  then,  let's  forget  the  whole  busi- 
ness. Refund  all  my  taxes,  since  the  government 
can't  collect  on  the  earnings  of  a  job  which  it 
insists  I  do  not  have." 

Mr.  Bronstein  was  pleased  by  the  paradox, 
Mr.  Santini  perplexed.  I  answered  their  silence 
with  a  riddle:  "Gentlemen,  I  write  but  am  not  a 
writer;  teach  but  am  not  a  teacher,  study  but  am 
not  a  student.    What  am  I?" 

"A  taxpayer,  even  such  as  I,"  Mr.  Bronstein 
replied.  With  that  I  began  to  pick  up  the  ex- 
hibits which  littered  Mr.  Santini's  desk— bursar's 
receipts,  transcripts,  rent  checks,  journals.  A  stack 
of  letters  from  various  editors  was  beyond  my 
reach.  Mr.  Bronstein  passed  them  to  me  and,  to 
my  embarrassment,  started  to  read  one  from 
John  Crowe  Ransom.  It  was  a  lovely  letter,  full 
of  generous  praise,  but  it  concluded  with  an  even 
more  generous  apology  for  rejecting  one  of  my 
essays.  For  the  first  time  during  the  long  after- 
noon—now early  evening— I  felt  something  like 
outrage.  His  face  alight  in  incomprehensible 
triumph,  his  finger  pointing  to  the   final   para- 


graph, he  thrust  the  letter  across  the  desk.  The 
two  men  were  suddenly  transfixed.  "Do  they 
pay?"   Mr.   Bronstein   asked   insistently. 

"What's  the  difference?  They  never  printed 
the  piece." 

"The  matter  of  motive,  Mr.  Rosenberg,  the 
matter  of  motive!    Do  they  pay?" 

"A  few  dollars  a  page,  perhaps.  But  this  is  a 
rejection." 

"A  rejection,  Santini,  he  says  it's  a  rejection! 
You  hoped  to  make  some  money  when  you  wrote 
it?    You  submitted  it  knoioing  they  pay?" 

"My  motive  was  in  part  remunerative." 

"You  have  more  of  the  same?" 

"More  than  I  care  to  acknowledge." 

"Mr.  Rosenberg,  the  riddle  is  solved.  You  are 
not  an  unincorporated  charity;  you  are  a  profes- 
sional writer."   Mr.  Santini  nodded  vigorously. 

TH  E  riddle  only  deepened  in  my  own  eyes, 
for  I  could  not  comprehend  why  my  re- 
jection slips  and  not  my  published  articles 
proved  that  I  was  a  professional.  I  sorted  out 
the  other  paying  rejections  from  the  pile  of  non- 
remunerative  acceptances  and  handed  them  to 
Mr.  Bronstein.    "Can  we  keep  them  on  file?" 

"All  except  the  one  from  John  Crowe  Ransom. 
I  have  a  certain  fondness  for  it."  Mr.  Bronstein, 
too,  had  become  attached  to  it,  for  he  suddenly 
left  the  room  letter  in  hand,  while  Mr.  Santini 
began  to  refigure  my  claims,  pausing  only  to 
wonder  aloud  why  I  had  so  long  concealed  the 
rejections. 

"One  hundred  sixty  dollars  thirteen  cents  for 
1956;  one  hundred  fourteen  twenty  for  1955; 
total  of  two  hundred  seventy-four  dollars  thirty- 
three  cents;  allow  eight  weeks  for  the  check  to 
arrive." 

While  I  signed  in  triplicate,  Mr.  Bronstein  re- 
turned with  three  Verifax  copies  of  the  Ransom 
letter,  which  Mr.  Santini  stapled  to  my  claims. 
They  scrutinized  the  completed  dossier  and  Mi. 
Bronstein  assured  me  it  would  pass  the  super- 
visor. "But,"  he  added,  "if  you  had  brought  re- 
jections from  real  magazines,  like  Harper's  or 
the  Saturday  Eveiiing  Post,  nobody  in  the  whole 
Internal  Revenue  Service  could  bat  an  eyelash." 

I  thanked  him  for  his  advice,  Mr.  Santini  for 
his  patience  and,  as  I  walked  out  onto  VV^est 
Houston  Street,  had  an  inspiration.  I  would 
write  word  for  word  what  had  transpired,  sub- 
mit it  yearly  to  Harper's,  and  every  April  ap- 
pend my  rejection  slip  to  the  relevant  portion 
of  Form  1040.  .And  I  would  be  free  for  as  long 
as  I  cared  to  write  for  JEGP,  PMLA,  ASLHM, 
MLQ,  QJS,  and  ZfRPh. 

Harper's  Magazine,  August  1961 


KENNETH    CLARK 


ART  AND  SOCIETY 


One  of  the  few  truly  distinguished  art  critics 

of  our  time  considers  the  thorniest  of 

the  controversies  that  harass  the  world  of  art 

— the  relation  of  the  artist  to  his  audience. 

AR  T  is  an  extensive  word.  In  this  essay  I 
limit  it  to  the  branch  of  art  that  I  know 
l)esi,  the  visual  arts:  and  I  take  this  term  to  cover 
everything  made  in  response  to  the  feeling  that 
(ertain  events  or  objects  of  contemplation,  seen 
or  imagined,  are  so  important  that  they  must  be 
recorded;  and  that  certain  objects  of  use  are  so 
im]:)ortani  that  they  must  be  enriched.  These  two 
aspects  of  visual  art  I  refer  to  as  image  and 
ornament.  They  used  to  be  called  "fine  art"  and 
"apjilied  art,"  and  in  the  nineteenth  century 
were  severely  distinguished  from  one  another. 
Today  we  tend  to  minimize  this  distinction.  We 
believe  that  the  form-creating  instinct  can  ex- 
press itself  in  both  ornament  and  image;  all 
ornament,  however  abstract,  suggests  some  visual 
experience;  all  images,  however  factual,  reveal 
some  sense  of  design.  Both  are  forms  of  order. 
And  both  are  sacramental.  "What  is  this  sacra- 
ment?" as  the  catechism  says.  "The  outward  and 
visible  sign  of  an  inward  and  sjiiritual  grace." 
Both  image  and  ornament  are  revelations  of  a 
state  of  mind  and  social  temper. 

Having  accepted  this  basic  unity,  however, 
these  two  branches  of  visual  art  show  very  great 
differences,  especially  in  their  relationship  to 
society,  and  1  shall  consider  them  separately. 
I  think  it  true  tcj  say  that  all  image  art  of  any 
value  has  been  made  by,  or  on  behalf  of,  a  small 
minority:  not  necessarily  a  governing  class  in  a 
political  sense,  but  a  governing  class  in  an  intel- 
lectual and  spiritual  sense.  Since  I  shall  often 
refer  to  this  minority,  I  must  decide  what  to  call 
it.  Plato's  "governors"  is  loo  narrow  a  icini, 
RcHisseau's  volonU'  gcnerair  is  loo  wide  and  too 
mysterious.    For  the  sake  of  brevity   J   have   re- 


ferred to  it  as  an  elite;  although  in  fact  it  is  not 
elected,  and  may  be  drawn  from  any  class  of 
society. 

Images  are  not  made  for  fun.  In  fact  it  is 
almost  true  to  say  that  all  image  art  of  value  il- 
lustrates or  confirms  a  system  of  belief  held  by 
an  elite,  and  very  often  is  employed  consciousl